From: "Mel Bartels" 
To: 
Reply-To: "Mel Bartels" 


>>>
> That does it....I have long had the notion of building a large thin mirror
> and supporting the bulk of it's weight on a bladder of air.  i.e. a
> semi-deflated 'balloon', with a reservoir of extra air in a bellows being
> pressurized by a suspended pendulum type weight.  As the scope is tipped
> toward the horizon, the pendulum puts less weight on the bellows so that
the
> mirror is not lifted off the collimation points....anyways, thanks for the
> encouragement.  The time has come to try to make this idea work.

The time has come? It's already been tried, quite successfully, by none
other than Leon Foucault in the late 1850's and early 1860's.
<<<

And more recently if I am not mistaken, in the 1960's, where Boller and
Chivens used this style of support.

Mel Bartels

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