International Partners Start Construction at the Las Campanas
Observatory
PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Leading scientists, senior officials, and supporters from an
international consortium of universities and research institutions are
gathering on a remote mountaintop high in the Chilean Andes today to
celebrate groundbreaking for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). The
ceremony marks the commencement of on-site construction of the telescope
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and its support base. The 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.
“We are thrilled to be breaking ground on the Giant Magellan Telescope
site at such an exciting time for astronomy,” says Board Chair, and
Director of the McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas at
Austin, Dr. Taft Armandroff. “With its unprecedented size and resolving
power, the Giant Magellan Telescope will allow current and future
generations of astronomers to continue the journey of cosmic discovery.”
The GMT will be located at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile’s
Atacama Desert. Known for its clear, dark skies and outstanding
astronomical image clarity, Las Campanas is one of the world’s premier
locations for astronomy. 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.
“An enormous amount of work has gone into the design phase of the
Project and development of the giant mirrors that are the heart of the
telescope. The highest technical risks have been retired, and we are
looking forward to bringing the components of the telescope together on
the mountain top,” says Patrick McCarthy, Interim President of GMTO.
The GMT will enable astronomers to characterize planets orbiting other
stars, witness early formation of galaxies and stars, and gain insight
into dark matter and dark energy. GMT’s findings will also likely give
rise to new questions and lead to new and unforeseen discoveries.
The GMT Organization Board of Directors officially approved the
Project’s entry into the construction phase in early 2015 after the
eleven international Founders committed over $500M towards the project.
Founders come from the U.S., Australia, Brazil, and Korea, with Chile as
the host country.
“With today’s groundbreaking, we take a crucial step forward in our
mission to build the first in a new generation of extremely large
telescopes. The GMT will usher in a new era of discovery and help us to
answer some of our most profound questions about the universe,” says
GMTO Board Member and Director of the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics Dr. Charles Alcock. “We are pleased to celebrate this
momentous milestone with our Chilean colleagues, our international
partners, and the astronomical community.”
To access our video news package including interviews with GMTO
partners and b-roll, as well as images and video graphics of the Giant
Magellan Telescope, please visit: www.gmto.org/gallery.
About the Giant Magellan Telescope
The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is slated to be the first in a new
class of extremely large telescopes, capable of producing images with 10
times the clarity of those captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The
GMT aims to discover Earth-like planets around nearby stars and the tiny
distortions that black holes cause in the light from distant stars and
galaxies. It will reveal the faintest objects ever seen in space,
including extremely distant and ancient galaxies, the light from which
has been travelling to Earth since shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8
billion years ago. The telescope will be built at the Carnegie
Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in the dry, clear air
of Chile’s Atacama Desert, in a dome 22 stories high. GMT is expected to
see first light in 2021 and be fully operational by 2024.
The telescope’s primary mirror combines seven 8.4-meter (27 feet)
diameter circular segments to form an effective aperture 24.5 meters in
diameter. Each mirror segment weighs 17 tons and takes one year to cast
and cool, followed by more than three years of surface generation and
meticulous polishing at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab of the Steward
Observatory of the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz. Funding for
the project comes from the partner institutions, governments and private
donors.
About the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization
University of Texas at Austin.
Connect with the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization on social media: gplus.to/gmtelescope,
and visit http://www.gmto.org.
Contacts
Media contacts:
Zeno Group
Jacqueline Efron,
650-801-0942
or
Giant
Magellan Telescope Organization
Davin Malasarn, 626-204-0529
or
Business
contacts:
Patrick McCarthy
Interim President, Giant
Magellan Telescope Organization
626-204-0501
or
Prof.
Taft Armandroff
Director, McDonald Observatory
University of
Texas at Austin
512-471-3300