A group of scientists has made a mirror by coating a liquid with silver. The mirror could form the heart of a telescope on the Moon capable of detecting infrared light from stars a thousand times dimmer than those resolvable today. Liquid mirrors are not new. The surface of the liquid metal mercury, when rotated at constant speed in a gravity field, becomes a parabola that is perfect for focusing a telescope. For a given diameter, it is a hundred times cheaper to construct than a mirror made of ground glass. Such liquid mirrors can be made very large – up to 6 metres across – and are in use in a number of astronomical telescopes around the world.
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19426095.900-liquid-mirror-could-be-used-for-moonbased-telescope.html====================================================================
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