A new technique for generating really light-absorbing black tints is advancing telescope manufacture.
Researchers have created the blackest black ever made on Earth, by bubbling a shiny metal plate in nitric acid for a few seconds.
This new super-black coating produced by Richard Brown and his colleagues at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington is designed to revolutionise the manufacture of optical instruments.
(Thanks, Ernie!)