Scientists reach for the stars to build the perfect telescope

Queen's team working with NASA on project
Wednesday, July 04, 2007

By Eddie McIlaine

A team of Ulster academics have teamed up with NASA to build the perfect lunar telescope.

Professor Jim Swindall and his team of research chemists at Queen's University are helping to design an instrument with a liquid lens that will gaze further into the space than ever before, and will be capable of spotting some of the oldest objects in outer space including the first stars.

Professor Swindall and his colleague, Professor Ken Seddon, are co-operating with scientists at NASA in the USA and Canada to design the space-age instrument that will be based on a satellite.

QUILL - Queen's University Ionic Liquid Laboratories - is working on a process that will see mercury in giant telescopes designed for the moon replaced with an ionic liquid.

The moon 'scope will have a mirror consisting of a liquid with a thin metal film on its surface spinning and rotating to form a bowl-shaped parabola.

"It will reflect infra-red light from distant stars and galaxies that can't be picked up by telescopes here on earth," explained Prof Swindall.

The QUILL department at QUB, which is supported by corporate bodies and major industries, has been wrestling with the problem that traditional heavy mercury in a moon-based telescope would boil at the low pressure on the moon and be in danger of contaminating the satellite's surface.

And the two professors - Swindall in charge of the organisational side and Seddon in charge of the science - aided by a team of 50 post-doctoral scientists and Phd students, are experimenting with ionic liquids which have no vapours as a replacement for the mercury.

"We are involved in intricate experiments with the backing of NASA that could indeed result in the perfect telescope," said Professor Swindall.

Salt heated to 800 degrees becomes molten and is an ionic liquid, and QUILL, set up in 1999, is now working to produce a host of room temperature ionic liquids which can be used as designer solvents in many different applications.

"In the ideal telescope the ionic liquid will be covered with a thin film of metal to allow reflection," added Professor Swindall.

It was QUILL's experiments with ionic liquids that attracted the interest of NASA in the first place and helped to win Queen's and this specialised department the moon contract.

"One day a little bit of QUB will hopefully be up there on the moon thanks to the intricate experiments going on at QUILL," added Professor Swindall.

Telescopes with parabolic liquid mirrors are cheaper and easier to manufacture and maintain than the conventional instruments with expensive and heavy glass mirrors.