[en] The working principle of liquid mirror telescopes (LMTs) is first reviewed along with their advantages and disadvantages over classical telescopes. For several reasons (access to regions near the south galactic pole, galactic center, good image quality, etc.), an excellent site for such an LMT is the Atacama desert. A deep (B~24 mag) LMT survey at latitudes near -22deg -- -29deg will cover ~90 square degrees at high galactic latitude and be especially useful for gravitational lensing studies, for the identification of various classes of interesting extragalactic objects (cf. clusters, supernovae, etc. at high redshift) and for subsequent follow-up observations with 8 m-class telescopes. A short description of the handling of data products is also presented.
Disciplines :
Space science, astronomy & astrophysics
Author, co-author :
Poels, Joël ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'astrophys., géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > Astroph. extragalactique et observations spatiales (AEOS)
Moreau, O.
Manfroid, Jean ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'astrophys., géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > Département d'astrophys., géophysique et océanographie (AGO)
Surdej, Jean ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'astrophys., géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > Astroph. extragalactique et observations spatiales (AEOS)