Plans for a Liquid Mirror Telescope on the Moon

[sheeny]

I was listening to this story on a PODcast (or was it ABC radio last Friday Morning?:shrug: ) and it's now appeared in news @ nature:

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070618/full/070618-11.html

One of the sites talked about for locating the scope on the moon was one of the poles so it could be used to take extremely long exposures in the one spot in order to look as far back in time as possible.

Al.

[bojan]

How they are going to point it to anything other that zenith :shrug:
Not to mention tracking.....

[iceman]

I heard about it on the Nature PodCast too. Apparently it WILL only be pointed at the Zenith. Not sure about tracking? I assume even at the pole of the Moon it would still need to track as the Moon orbited the Earth?

[bojan]

Yes, moon rotational axis precesses, slowly but still precesses... and what is so interesting exactly above Moon poles?
It seems to me this is not a very practical idea, at this stage that is...
Tracking might be possible in a very limited range (similar to Arecibo radio telescope), but on expense of collimation:eyepop:....