Revolution in the Manufacturing of the Extremely Large Telescopes Optics

19 February 2024 15:00 - 16:00

The revolution of large telescopes has significantly advanced our understanding of the universe by allowing astronomers to observe distant celestial objects with greater clarity and detail. These telescopes, equipped with advanced technologies and larger apertures, enable scientists to study everything from distant galaxies to exoplanets, expanding our knowledge of the cosmos.

This webinar will discuss about the last century, the astronomical ground based observatories have driven the development of large monolithic substrates of glass or glass ceramics as well as the polishing and the metrology techniques. These efforts have culminated in the production very large monolithic mirrors of 8 meters diameter for the Very Large Telescope in Europe and the Gemini and the Large Binocular Telescopes in the US. The scientific needs for even large collecting areas have led to the development of segmented primary mirror, the pioneering work of the Keck Telescope and the Grand Telescopio Canarias having demonstrated the readiness of the manufacturing technology to produce such mirrors. During the last decade, two large ground based observatories projects have moved to the implementation phase , the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). Safran Reosc has been contracted the production of the 931 segments of the primary mirror, as well as the 4 meter secondary and tertiary mirrors, the thin shells of the adaptive fourth mirror and the tip-tilt stabilization fifth mirror. The presentation will focus on the first year of production of the primary mirror segments and the production line set up to produce one segment every day.