Angel, Roger

Roger Angel, in full James Roger Prior Angel, (born Feb. 7, 1941, St. Helens, Lancashire, Eng.), British-born American astronomer whose lightweight mirror designs enabled the construction of some of the largest telescopes in the world.

Angel received a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Oxford in 1963 and a master’s degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1966. He earned a doctorate in physics from Oxford in 1967. From 1967 to 1973 he was an associate professor of physics at Columbia University in New York City. In 1973 he first became an associate professor of astronomy and then a full professor in 1975 at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Prior to the early 1980s, telescope mirrors were limited to diameters of 6 metres (236 inches) because larger mirrors would sag under their own weight and thus be unable to maintain the precise parabolic shape necessary for astronomical observations. At the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory, Angel placed hexagonal columns in the mirror mold, which created a honeycomb pattern of holes in the back of the mirror and reduced the weight by four-fifths. He also created a spinning oven for making mirrors; the rotation of the oven gives rise to a centrifugal force that shapes the molten glass into a parabolic surface that is very close to that required for astronomical observations. Angel’s lab went on to make some of the largest telescope mirrors in the world, including the 6.5-metre (255-inch) mirror for the MMT Observatory, which was first used in 2000, and the two 8.4-metre (331-inch) mirrors for the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory, which were first used in 2005 and 2008.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, Angel worked extensively on the problem of designing telescope systems that could detect extrasolar planets similar to Earth and determine if they had life on their surfaces. In 2006 he proposed a geoengineering project to reduce global warming by placing trillions of small shades that refract sunlight near the L1 Lagrangian point. In 2009 he founded REhnu, a corporation that developed solar power generators using high-efficiency solar cells.