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primary mirror

British  

noun

  1. the mirror that collects and focuses the incoming light in a reflecting telescope

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

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Webb used its huge 6.5m-wide primary mirror and sensitive infrared instruments to make the discovery.

From BBC • May 30, 2024

By combining the four VLT 8.2-metre telescopes at ESO's Paranal Observatory, they can resolve details as if astronomers would employ a telescope with a primary mirror of 200 metres in diameter.

From Science Daily • Jan. 8, 2024

By blocking much of the starlight, we transformed the primary mirror into an array of small collectors, allowing Keck to work much like modern radio telescopes that link many smaller antennas together.

From Scientific American • Aug. 18, 2023

With a primary mirror 21 feet wide, the Webb is seven times as powerful as its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.

From New York Times • Dec. 27, 2022

Telescopes are also limited by diffraction, because of the finite diameter D of their primary mirror.

From Textbooks • Aug. 12, 2015