The guts of giant telescopes whir to life in this mesmerizing video
February 21, 2012 at 1:16 PM
Andrew Cooper put together this video of the two Keck telescopes in action on top of Mauna Kea in Hawai'i. There are some beautiful time-lapse shots like in the pic above, but the reason to watch this video is for all the behind-the-scenes footage showing what telescopes like this have going on behind the mirror.
The whole video is worth watching just for the artistry of it (and the music), but there are some specific scenes that could use some extra explanation. Specifically, the "delay lines" moving along the tracks like little trains at 0:28, 0:39, and elsewhere. Many telescopes are starting to use systems like these to combine multiple discrete mirrors into a much larger imaging device (like the ESA's Very Large Telescope), so let's just go over how it works.
via DVICE
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