Mezzocielo: an attempt to redesign the concept of wide field telescopes

R. Ragazzoni; M. Dima; C. Arcidiacono; D. Magrin; S. Di Rosa; S. Zaggia

doi:10.1117/12.2560524

13 December 2020 Mezzocielo: an attempt to redesign the concept of wide field telescopes

R. Ragazzoni, M. Dima, C. Arcidiacono, D. Magrin, S. Di Rosa, S. Zaggia

Proceedings Volume 11445, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes VIII; 1144534 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2560524
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2020, Online Only

Conference Poster

Abstract

Mezzocielo (or "half of the sky") is a concept for a new class of telescopes where a full spherical optical surface is made by filling with a liquid a structure built up with spherical lenses and almost covering an entire sphere. Lenses of the same class of existing ones can be arranged, for example like the faces of a dodecahedron, in order to build up a sphere in the 1 to 4m class in diameter. Liquid with low refractive index and high transparency are available in the electronic and cooling industry and made up devices with strong high order spherical aberrations but consistently identical over basically any direction in the sky simultaneously. An ensemble of moving correctors or a hemispherical array of the same kind of devices can feed a number of detectors lying in the range of the ten of thousands, making modern CMOS the only, today, viable solution to such a kind of futuristic facility.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

R. Ragazzoni, M. Dima, C. Arcidiacono, D. Magrin, S. Di Rosa, and S. Zaggia "Mezzocielo: an attempt to redesign the concept of wide field telescopes", Proc. SPIE 11445, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes VIII, 1144534 (13 December 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2560524

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