RIP Jerry Nelson

RIP Jerry Nelson
Jerry Nelson, who along with Terry Mast and George Gabor, created an innovative segmented telescope mirror that has been the basis for both ground- and space-based optical telescopes ever since, has passed away.
The construction of the 5-m Hale Telescope in 1949 pushed the boundaries for single-mirror telescopes. At such a large size the mirror has to be thick enough to support its own weight without being so massive that gravity changes the shape of the mirror as it moves.

A workaround was not developed for decades, with the first Keck telescope, which was installed in 1993 being the first of its kind—a 10-m segmented mirror made of 36 smaller hexagonal mirrors, each independently controlled by a computer. This design has been present on every subsequent large ground-based optical telescope and is also present in the Hubble-replacing James Webb Space Telescope.

Article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/science/jerry-nelson-segmented-telescope-dies-at-73.html

Photo: Jerry Nelson peering into a mirror at the Lick Observatory.
Credit: University of California Santa Cruz

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