The next generation telescope, the Giant Magellan Telescope, is the largest Gregorian optical infrared telescope ever engineered and one step closer to completion.
The project will begin the four-year process to fabricate and polish its seventh and final primary mirror, the last required to complete the telescope's 368 square meter light collecting surface, The Giant Magellan Telescope —GMTO Corporation recently announced. The seven mirrors, together, will collect more light than any other telescope in existence, allowing humanity to unlock the secrets of the Universe by providing detailed chemical analyses of celestial objects and their origin.
The 39-meter-tall telescope structure is being manufactured with 2,100 tons of American steel at a newly built manufacturing facility in Rockford, Illinois, the release said. Once assembled, all seven mirrors will work in concert as one monolithic 25.4-meter mirror, a diameter equal to the length of a full-grown blue whale—resulting in up to 200 times the sensitivity and four times the image resolution of today's most advanced space telescopes.
The Giant Magellan Telescope is the largest Gregorian optical infrared telescope ever engineered.
The Giant Magellan Telescope is the next generation of telescopes," said Rebecca Bernstein, chief scientist of the Giant Magellan Telescope . "This project will provide insight and answer many astrophysics puzzles from searching for signs of life on distant exoplanets to investigating the cosmic origins of chemical elements and learning how the Earth was formed."
The Giant Magellan Telescope is largest Gregorian optical infrared telescope ever engineered.
Similar to how NASA's James Webb Telescope images have provided insights into the vast universe with never-before-seen images, the Giant Magellan Telescope will be able to capture similar images from the ground with some added benefits to the science world.
"The telescope is designed with instruments that have the capability to be updated as technology advances," Bernstein explained. As the images and more information become available to scientists, technology will advance, and the telescope's instruments are designed to meet those advancements with updates or replacements to continue to move forward in new discoveries.
In addition, the telescope is much larger than NASA's James Webb Telescope which can provide more complex images and has a better capability to study the younger cooler exoplanets because of the optical infrared ground telescope design.
When finished, the two billion project will be the largest public-private funded science project in history.
The Giant Magellan Telescope is the work of the GMTO Corporation, an international consortium of leading universities and research institutions from the United States, South Korea, Israel, Brazil and Australia.
Founders include Arizona State University, Astronomy Australia Ltd., Australian National University, Carnegie Institution for Science, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo— FAPESP, Harvard University, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Texas A&M University, The University of Texas at Austin, University of Arizona, University of Chicago, and the Weizmann Institute of Science.
The Giant Magellan Telescope is largest Gregorian optical infrared telescope ever engineered.
The group is also in negotiations with The United States Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP) for more accessibility to the public for scientists to benefit from the Giant Magellan Telescope to help bring more scientific minds access to the telescope to help answer the many unknowns of the universe and beyond.
"Astronomy gives us the power to reach a wide audience and science gives this unique ability to unite us to a common goal," said Bernstein.
The Giant Magellan Telescope is largest Gregorian optical infrared telescope ever engineered.
Once complete, the Giant Magellan Telescope will call the Las Campanas Peak at the southern edge of Chile's Atacama Desert home. "The Chile location is the best place in the world for the telescope," Bernstein added. The location was chosen for its ideal arid temperatures, high altitude and lack of light pollution.
The completion time for the Giant Magellan Telescope is anticipated for the early 2030s.