Astronomical Research with Liquid Mirror Telescopes

Abstract

Liquid mirror telescopes are of interest to Astronomy because of their very low capital and operating costs. Low cost has a potentially revolutionary impact since it allows one to dedicate a large telescope to a narrowly focused project that needs a large quantity of observations. The technology is now well proven in the laboratory as well as in observatory settings and is stepping into the mainstream of astronomical research. This paper has two main purposes. a) To acquaint the astronomical community with LMT zenith observing and to illustrate the LMT advantage with specific examples of research topics of current interest that could be carried out only with LMTs because of their low costs. I argue that LMTs are more versatile than generally thought and that the challenge is to use LMTs in such ways as to maximize their advantages and minimize their disadvantages. I briefly review specific issues regarding zenith telescopes. I then illustrate the LMT advantage with specific examples of astronomical research. b) I show that the large number of objects observed with a surveying LMT allows one to carry out cosmological projects at low redshifts. I show that a variability survey would obtain light curves for several thousands of type Ia supernovae per year up to z=1 and easily discriminate among competing cosmological models. The same survey would find large numbers of MACHOs in clusters of galaxies and in background faint galaxies. Finally, I discuss a spectrophotometric survey carried out with interference filters, showing its power to discriminate among cosmological models and to study the large-scale distribution of galaxies in the Universe.