The Large Zenith Telescope: A 6 m Liquid-Mirror Telescope

The Large Zenith Telescope is a 6 m optical telescope employing a rotating primary mirror coated with a film of liquid mercury. Located at an altitude of 400 m in the Coast Mountains of southwestern British Columbia, this telescope began regular operation in 2005 October. Equipped with a four-element Richardson prime-focus corrector and thinned 2048×2048 pixel drift-scanning CCD imaging camera, it is used for astronomical survey observations and also serves as an engineering test facility for further development of liquid-mirror technology. Built at a cost of less than $1 million dollars, it achieves an image quality and sensitivity comparable to that of a conventional telescope of equal aperture and is limited primarily by the astronomical quality of the site.