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bobunf

Member

From: Phoenix, AZ

Registered: 2005-11-21

Posts: 223

Giant Magellan Telescope

For the past several years, a group of optical scientists and engineers working at the UA Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory underneath the UA’s football stadium have been polishing an 8.4-meter diameter mirror with an unusual, highly asymmetric shape. The mirror has an unconventional shape because it is part of what ultimately will be a single 25-meter optical surface composed of seven circular segments, each 8.4 meters in diameter. The board for the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization officially accepted the mirror in Washington, D.C.

Work on the second mirror began in January of this year, and a third is expected to be cast next September. At the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in northern Chile, earthmovers are completing the removal of 4 million cubic feet of rock to produce a flat platform for the telescope and its supporting buildings.

The telescope, slated to begin operations late in the decade, will address critical questions in cosmology, astrophysics and planetary science, including getting a clearer picture of planets that orbit nearby stars.

The Giant Magellan Telescope partner institutions are the Australian National University, Astronomy Australia Limited, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Harvard University, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, The Smithsonian Institution, Texas A&M University, the University of Arizona, the University of Chicago and the University of Texas at Austin.  Members are providing and raising the funding toward the $700 million project, with about 40 to 45 percent of the funding secured.

RGClark

Member

From: Philadelphia, PA

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 720

Website

Re: Giant Magellan Telescope

For the past several years, a group of optical scientists and engineers working at the UA Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory underneath the UA’s football stadium have been polishing an 8.4-meter diameter mirror with an unusual, highly asymmetric shape. The mirror has an unconventional shape because it is part of what ultimately will be a single 25-meter optical surface composed of seven circular segments, each 8.4 meters in diameter. The board for the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization officially accepted the mirror in Washington, D.C.

Work on the second mirror began in January of this year, and a third is expected to be cast next September. At the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in northern Chile, earthmovers are completing the removal of 4 million cubic feet of rock to produce a flat platform for the telescope and its supporting buildings.

The telescope, slated to begin operations late in the decade, will address critical questions in cosmology, astrophysics and planetary science, including getting a clearer picture of planets that orbit nearby stars.

The Giant Magellan Telescope partner institutions are the Australian National University, Astronomy Australia Limited, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Harvard University, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, The Smithsonian Institution, Texas A&M University, the University of Arizona, the University of Chicago and the University of Texas at Austin.  Members are providing and raising the funding toward the $700 million project, with about 40 to 45 percent of the funding secured.

Thanks for that. Glad to see the project proceeding apace. It will perhaps be able to directly image extrasolar planets:

Big friendly giant: the Giant Magellan Telescope.
26 December 2008
by Heather Catchpole
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/2430/full

  Bob Clark

---

Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):

      “Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,017

Re: Giant Magellan Telescope

Wow it may be just one post in the topic but sort of knew we had it....

Sixth mirror casting brings Giant Magellan Telescope closer to completion

During the process, nearly 20 tons (17.5 metric tons) of extremely pure borosilicate glass made by Ohara Corporation in Japan will become a honeycomb mirror measuring 27.6 feet (8.4 meters) across. The mirror is the sixth of seven segments that together will make up the primary mirror of the Giant Magellan Telescope, currently under construction in Chile's Atacama Desert. The telescope will see farther into the universe and capture more detail than any optical telescope before.

Arranged in a flower-like array, seven individual mirror segments will come together to form a primary mirror surface measuring 82 feet (25 meters) in diameter. Due to the primary mirror's large size and deep curvature, the shape of each outer segment is unlike any mirror ever made and required major innovations for polishing and measuring the surface.

Spin-casting is the first step of a four-year process to create each mirror. The other steps are carried out in other parts of the Mirror Lab, so up to four mirror segments can be manufactured in parallel.

Glass That Flows Like Honey
It took engineers and technicians four months to build the mold that will form the sixth lightweight honeycomb mirror, and it took nine hours to cover the mold with glass. With the mold in place and the glass loaded, they closed the furnace's lid, which measures 33 feet (10 meters) in diameter.

The furnace began heating the glass on March 1 and will reach a peak temperature of 2,129 degrees Fahrenheit (1,165 degrees Celsius) at 2 p.m. on March 6.

Once the Giant Magellan Telescope becomes fully operational, it will have a light collecting area of 3,961 square feet (368 square meters) - enough to see the torch engraved on a dime from nearly 100 miles away. It also will offer the widest field of view of any Extremely Large Telescope in the 30-meter (98-foot) class. The telescope's viewing power is 10 times greater than the famed Hubble Space Telescope and four times greater than the highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope, expected to launch in late 2021.

In the late 2020s, the giant mirrors will be transported more than 5,000 miles to the Giant Magellan Telescope's future home at Las Campanas Observatory more than 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) above sea level. The site is known for being one of the best astronomical sites on the planet, with its clear skies, low light pollution and stable airflow. The southern hemisphere location allows the telescope to see the Milky Way's center, which is of great scientific interest because of the types of stars found there and the super-massive black hole that lies at the center of the galaxy.

https://www.gmto.org/
https://www.skynightly.com/index.html

Thats a large amount of glass....and a long period of time to make