Large aperture mirror array (LAMA) - Project overview

The Large Aperture Mirror Array (LAMA) is a novel concept for an extremely-large telescope. In the current design, light from 66 individual 6.15-meter telescopes would be coherently combined at a common focus. This would give the array the light-gathering power of a 50-meter telescope and the resolving power of a 70-meter telescope. The optics and beam combiner preserve the sine condition, providing interferometric imaging over an extended field of view. The concept is unique in that pointing and tracking is accomplished entirely by secondary optical systems: the primary mirrors are fixed in both position and orientation. This allows rotating liquid-metal primary mirrors to be employed, substantially reducing the project cost. At a 30-degree latitude, the tracking system provides access to approximately 2500 square degrees (6% of the sky) and allows individual fields to be observed for up to 35 min per night. The telescope would be initially equipped with a multi-band optical/infrared imaging camera and a high-resolution optical spectrograph.