Michael A. Stecker
Astronomical Sites:
GMT Casting Event |
|
Approximately 125 astronomers, administrators and guests attended a July 23, 2005 meeting in Tucson, Arizona celebrating the casting of the first of seven 8.4 meter mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) . The group responsible for the project are: Carnegie Institution, Harvard University, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, University of Arizona, University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Texas and Texas A&M. When completed and placed in Chile the instrument will be the largest telescope in the world with resolution "ten times that of the Hubble Space Telescope".
The University of Arizona's Steward Observatory Mirror Lab is building the
mirrors in a huge spinning furnace (in order to achieve a meniscus shape
to the molten glass). Twenty tons of E6 borosilicate glass from
Ohara Glassworks in Japan is used in the casting of the first 8.4-meter
(27-foot) diameter mirror for the GMT. With this milestone step, the
GMT becomes the first extremely large ground-based telescope to start
construction. Richard Meserve,
president of the Carnegie Institution, said:
References:
Ground Breaking -- 2015 The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is poised to become the world's largest telescope when it begins early operations in 2021. It will produce images ten times sharper than those delivered by the Hubble Space Telescope and will address key questions in cosmology, astrophysics and the study of planets outside our solar system. The GMT will be located at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert. Construction crews will soon be busy on the site building the roads, power, data, and other infrastructure needed to support the observatory. The unique design of the telescope combines seven of the largest mirrors that can be manufactured, each 8.4 meters (27 feet) across, to create a single telescope effectively 25 meters or 85 feet in diameter. The giant mirrors are being developed at the University of Arizona's Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory. Each mirror must be polished to an accuracy of 25 nanometers or one millionth of an inch. One giant mirror has been polished to meet its exacting specifications. Three others are being processed, and production of the additional mirrors will be started at the rate of one per year. The telescope will begin early operations with these first mirrors in 2021, and the telescope is expected to reach full operational capacity within the next decade. Founders come from the U.S., Australia, Brazil, and Korea, with Chile as the host country.
|
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
|