George Laopodis

The Telescope Makers George Laopodis

In this book, you will take a visual and optical excursion behind the construction and fabrication of the most famous and largest telesopes in the world. The reader will visit the famous Hubble Telescope mirror and also the twins; Keck I and Keck II Telescopes that reside on top of the Manu Kea Mountain on Hawaii (the largest telescopes ever). The journey will then continue behind a confidential military project called Target Acquisition and Designation System (TADS). These systems are still in use today in most military attack helicopters like the Apache and others. The next stop in the journey will take the reader behind the construction of one of the most important cameras ever built. It is attached on the Keck telescope II. It was designed and constructed by the optical scientists at the Lick optical laboratory in the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). Finally, we will stop in Richmond CA to witness the fabrication of the the next Space Telescope (J. Web Telescope) and the optics for the most powerful laser in the world; the National Ignition Facility (NIF).