Engineering the World's Largest Optical Telescope
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Cool story about what it's taking to construct the Giant Magellan Telescope....
When it turns on in full force in 2025, at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert, the GMT will be the largest optical observatory in the world. Its mirrors, each of which weighs roughly 17 tons, will be arranged in a flower-petal configuration, with six asymmetrical mirrors surrounding a central, symmetrical segment. Together, they will span some 80 feet (twice the diameter of existing optical telescopes) and possess a total area of 4,000 square feet (about the area of two singles tennis courts). With a resolving power 10 times that of the Hubble Space Telescope, the GMT is designed to capture and focus photons emanating from galaxies and black holes at the fringes of the universe, study the formation of stars and the worlds that orbit them, and search for traces of life in the atmospheres of habitable-zone planets.
But before GMT can do any of that, the scientists and engineers at the Mirror Lab need to manufacture these colossal slabs of glass. And doing so, as you might expect, is a truly monumental task.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-astounding-engineering-behind-the-giant-...
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Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Fly
Very Very cool. Nice pic too
Very Very cool. Nice pic too. I love space!
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: .............
....space....its where its at
....space....its where its at
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Def. High
Space is for Deadheads - not
Space is for Deadheads - not for warheads.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: ________
I bet disco stu can make a
I bet disco stu could make a better telescope with a coke bottle and a poster mailer.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Lance minimum goad Newberry
I guess my friends are going
I guess my friends are going to feel pretty small now...
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Fly
Dang lance, I have "scope"
Dang lance, I have "scope" envy. Looks kind of like a mobile rocket launcher.
Top of Page Bottom of Page PermalinkFull Name: Lance minimum goad Newberry
I went to high school with
I went to high school with those guys (the two in hats are directly responsible for getting me into the Grateful Dead, which I've never forgiven them for). They've had that scope for about 30 years now. It has a trailer and to this day they go up into the central CA mountains or way up into the sierras just about every new moon.
They look into deep space with that thing, which for me is often too hard to grasp. I used to go with them just for the fun & camping, but it's always cold with no fires or lights of any kind and I'm not endlessly fascinated with M52 or whatever they call the nebula's and other strange things they look at so I haven't gone in a long time.
It's a bad-ass telescope though and it opens your mind when you're looking at things so unbelievably far away.