![]() ![]() Still, GMTO says it is on course for the four-mirror installation and “First Light” in 2023, when the telescope will be turned to the night skies for the first time.Īnd then we’ll all get a chance to peer into the maternity ward of the cosmos and see galaxies being born. Even the transport to Chile will be a challenge-so much so that the teams have yet to decide exactly how they’ll pull it off. Once four of the mirrors are complete, they must be transported to the Chilean Andes, where the giant telescope will be constructed on the peak of a mountain range. Producing an off-axis mirror at this scale is a new achievement for the Caris Mirror Laboratory and for the field in general. Any mammoth mirror requires much of the same engineering, but six of the seven GMT mirrors have an off-axis, parabolic shape. Along the way, it undergoes four optical tests, some of which were engineered specifically for this project. Location: Atacama desert, Chile Type: Optical-infrared Diameter: 128 feet (39.3 meters) Designed by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the Extremely Large Telescope (which is due to be completed in 2027) also holds extremely lofty goals. Then they reposition the mirror in order to shape and polish the front face to within 20 nanometers of perfection-a process that takes about 18 months. The solar-powered telescope launched on Apon board the space shuttle Discovery and was deployed one day later. They grind and refine the back of the mirror with exacting precision. On Earth, it would weigh 24,500 pounds (11,110 kilograms). Engineers purge the ceramic mold from the mirror, wait for it to dry, and then rotate it again. Once cooled, massive machinery lifts the mirror and tilts it to a vertical position. This will allow astronomers to gaze back in time to, they hope, the materialization of galaxies. The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will be capable of collecting more light than all of the existing 8-to-10-meter telescopes on the planet, combined. The seven 8.4-meter-wide mirrors will combine to serve as a 24.5-meter mirror telescope with 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. This is still an open area of research as there are many mysteries in the universe, such as dark matter, dark energy and some ideas of Einstein. Once complete, it’s expected to be the largest telescope in the world. Big telescope observations related to gravity include examining how objects like planets and stars move in space and the way light bends around massive objects like galaxies. Caris Mirror Laboratory cast the first of seven mirrors back in 2005 they expect to complete construction of the telescope in 2025. The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) and a team at the University of Arizona's Richard F. But the recent castings of the 15-metric ton, off-axis mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) forced engineers to push the design and manufacturing process beyond all previous limits.īuilding the GMT is not a task of years, but of decades. The sheer size of the glass, the nanometer precision of its curves, its carefully calculated optics, and the adaptive software required to run it make this a task of herculean proportions. Building a mirror for any giant telescope is no simple feat. ![]()
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