Text: Elton Alison, from Agência FAPESP
The Giant Magellanic Telescope (GMT) will receive a new investment of US$205 million from an international consortium of institutions involved in the project, with the aim of accelerating construction.
According to GMT’s spokespeople, the investment is one of the largest funding rounds for the telescope and will involve the participation of FAPESP, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Harvard, the University of Chicago, Texas, and the University of Austin and Arizona in the United States. States. United
The resources committed by the six institutions will be used to advance the construction of the telescope’s steel structure, as well as seven primary mirrors and one of the most advanced spectrographs – scattering light with extremely high resolution – part of GMT’s scientific instruments.
GMT President Robert Shelton said the funding will help build the world’s largest mirrors, the assembly of the giant telescope and a scientific instrument that will allow us to study the chemical evolution of stars and planets. .
FAPESP will invest US$45 million in the construction of the megatelescope through a special project coordinated by Laerte Sodre Jr., professor at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences of the University of São Paulo (IAG-USP).
Funding will guarantee Brazilian researchers a predetermined amount of time to use the telescope for the development of studies.
“We are having extraordinary success developing instrumentation for GMT. Now, the systems engineering area of the project is our responsibility,” says Sodre Jr.
A new generation of telescopes
The GMT is under construction at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and will be part of a new generation of so-called “very large telescopes” that are ground-based and designed to provide unprecedented clarity and sensitivity in the observation of astronomical phenomena. – such as the origin of chemical elements and the formation of the first stars and galaxies.
The GMT design will combine seven mirrors to create a single 25-meter-diameter telescope with a diameter of 8.4 meters, capable of producing the most detailed images of the universe ever taken.
The megalensscope will have ten times the light-gathering area and four times the spatial resolution of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which launched into space in late 2021, and its first images are due to be released in the coming weeks. In addition, it will be 200 times more powerful than current research telescopes.
This unprecedented angular resolution, combined with revolutionary spectrographs and high-contrast cameras, will work in direct synergy with JWST to enable new scientific discoveries.
The idea is that GMT will allow the JWST to take the next step in studying the physics and chemistry of the faintest light sources in space. These include searching for habitable planetary atmospheres, studying the first galaxies that formed in the universe, and finding clues that unlock the secrets of dark matter, dark energy, black holes, and the formation of the universe.
“We work with some of the most accomplished engineers and scientists at the world’s leading research institutions,” said Walter Massey, chairman of the GMT board, former director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and president of Bank of America.
“Our investment partners’ recent contributions to the Giant Magellanic Telescope massively advance the frontiers of astronomy, making the future a reality and allowing us to respond to some important scientific goals,” he said.
GMT has already made significant progress in manufacturing in recent years. Six of the seven primary mirror segments were launched in Tucson, Arizona. The third primary mirror segment has completed its two-year polishing phase and is undergoing final testing. Additionally, construction of the facility to build the telescope structure is complete, construction of the telescope’s first adaptive secondary mirror is underway in France and Italy, and the site in Chile is ready for the next phase of construction and groundbreaking.
According to project proponents, this new $205 million investment positions the Giant Magellanic Telescope as one of the largest new-generation telescopes under construction. First light — as the acquisition of the first images by a telescope is called — is scheduled for later this decade.
“The six founders of the Giant Magellan Telescope worked together to bridge the financial gap between the resources we would bring to build the telescope and what would be needed to complete it,” said Eric Isaacs, president of the Carnegie Institution for Science.
“This investment will bring the telescope closer to first light and provide the world with evolutionary knowledge of our universe. Carnegie is proud to have initiated the funding effort and worked closely with our peers.