The Giant Magellanic Telescope (GMT) will receive a new investment of US$ 205 million from the international consortium of institutions participating in the project with the aim of accelerating construction.
According to spokespersons for the GMT, the investment represents one of the largest rounds of funding for the telescope and will have the participation of FAPESP, the Carnegie Institution for Science and the universities of Harvard, Chicago, Texas in Austin and Arizona, in the United States. United.
The resources that the six institutions have committed to commit will be used to advance the construction of the steel structure of the telescope, in addition to the seven primary mirrors and one of the most advanced spectrographs – which scatters light with very high clarity in color – part of the scientific instrumentation. of GMT.
“The funding will result in the fabrication of 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 like never before,” said Robert Shelton, president of the GMT.
FAPESP will invest US$ 45 million for the construction of the megatelescope through a special project coordinated by Laerte Sodré Junior, professor at the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of São Paulo (IAG-USP).
The funding will guarantee Brazilian researchers a pre-established time to use the telescope for the development of studies.
“We are achieving extraordinary success in developing instrumentation for the GMT. At the moment, the systems engineering area of the project is under our responsibility”, says Sodré Junior.
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 “extremely large telescopes”, ground-based and designed to provide unprecedented clarity and sensitivity in the observation of astrophysical phenomena. – such as the origins of chemical elements and the formation of the first stars and galaxies.
The GMT design will combine seven mirrors, each 8.4 meters in diameter, to create a single 25-meter-diameter telescope that will be able to produce the most detailed images of the Universe ever taken.
The megatelescope will have ten times the light-gathering area and four times the spatial resolution of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched into space in late 2021 and whose first images began to be released in recent weeks. In addition, it will be up to 200 times more powerful than existing research telescopes today.
This unprecedented angular resolution, combined with revolutionary spectrographs and high-contrast cameras, will work in direct synergy with the JWST to enable new scientific discoveries.
The idea is that the GMT will allow it to take the next step in studying the physics and chemistry of the faintest light sources in space that the JWST will identify. This includes searching the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets for life, studying the first galaxies that formed in the Universe, and finding clues that will unlock the mysteries of dark matter, dark energy, black holes, and the formation of the Universe itself.
“We are working with some of the brightest engineers and scientists at the world’s leading research institutions,” said Walter Massey, chairman of the GMT board and former director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and president of Bank of America.
“The recent contributions of our investment partners in the Giant Magellanic Telescope are collectively pushing the boundaries 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 construction 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. In addition, construction of the facility to manufacture the telescope structure is complete, production of the telescope’s first adaptive secondary mirror is underway in France and Italy, and the site in Chile is prepared for the next stage of construction and foundation laying. .
According to project spokespersons, this new $205 million investment round positions the Giant Magellanic Telescope as one of the first of a new generation of extremely large telescopes to be built. The first light – as the acquisition of the first images through a telescope is called – is scheduled for the end of this decade.
“Six founders of the Giant Magellan Telescope worked together to close the financial gap between the resources we bring in to build the telescope and what is 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 transformative knowledge of our Universe. Carnegie is proud to have initiated the funding effort and to have worked closely with our peers,” she said.