What you are seeing are Brobdingnagian lump of glass slowly being melted down to make a mirror for the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham . It ’s kick the bucket to be one of the biggest in the world .
According to National Geographic :
Three of today ’s big telescopes - Gemini North , Subaru , and Keck - fend within hailing distance of one another atop the nearly 14,000 - foot point of Hawaii ’s Mauna Kea , an dormant vent . The EL puts them above 40 pct of Earth ’s atmosphere - and most of its water vapour , which is opaque to the infrared wavelengths the astronomers like to study - but also makes it hard for the astronomers and engineers who act there to breathe and retrieve . Many jade clean-cut - plastic oxygen tubes in their nostrils as routinely as we might wear monocle . Others rely on the eubstance ’s power to conform but worry about making what they call a CLM , or “ career - limiting misunderstanding . ” “ At altitude , we do n’t improvise ; that would be a disaster , ” says Gemini astronomer Scott Fisher . “ We ’re kind of trained monkeys up here . The real thinking goes on at sea level . ”
These amazing images draw one scope ’s product , from glass chunks to completed mirror .
viaNational Geographic(thanks , Marilyn Terrell ! )
Glass is spread over this Brobdingnagian mold , melted , and then tardily spin to make an even , parabolical surface .
These are the 10 - Ezra Loomis Pound chunks of the lightweight glass up close .
Now tech must polish the trash until they ’re read to give it a final coat of extremely brooding aluminum .
The polished glass is used in the body of super - jumbo scope arrays like this one , atop Mauna Kea .
The Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham . Images will come along to come from a 22.8 - meter scope . It can also be manipulated to point in any direction you like .
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