If you thought that James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was impressive, think again. With $205 million in new funding to accelerate construction, the Giant Magellan Telescope is poised to become the most powerful telescope…ever. It will be used to search for habitable planets, study the universe’s first galaxies and try to explain mysteries like dark matter and energy.
The Giant Magellan Telescope will receive $205 million in funding
The $205 million check is one of the largest in the history of the Giant Magellan Telescope, led by the Carnegie Institution for Science, Harvard University, the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona and the University of Chicago.
The funds will be used to build a 12-story telescope, including seven primary mirrors housed at the University of Arizona’s Richard F. Careys Mirror Laboratory, and an advanced spectrograph in Texas. The final product will be assembled at the Ingersoll Machine Tools facility in Illinois.
“Funding is really a collaborative effort between our founders. This will produce the world’s largest mirrors, a giant telescope mount to hold and align them, and a scientific instrument that will allow us to study the chemical evolution of stars and planets like never before,” says Dr. Robert Shelton, President of the Giant Magellan Organization. telescope (GMTO).
An important priority in astronomy
JWST is already a feat of human engineering. So why all the fuss about the Giant Magellan Telescope?
National Academy of Sciences Astro2020 Decadal Study considered the project “absolutely necessary if the United States is to maintain its leadership in ground-based astronomy.”
The telescope will have 10 times the light-gathering area and four times the spatial resolution of JWST, and will be 200 times more powerful than any other research telescope currently in use. For context, it will be able to show a torch on a dime from nearly 100 miles away in sharp focus.
In doing so, the goal of the Giant Magellan Telescope will be to study the physics and chemistry of the faint light sources detected by JWST. The hope is to identify potentially habitable planets; to study the first galaxies of the universe; and the search for clues that would unlock the mysteries of dark matter and energy, black holes, and the origin of the universe.
Current progress of the Giant Magellan Telescope
Although there is currently no set date for the project’s completion, significant progress has been made. Currently, six of the seven main mirror segments have been cast, and the third segment has completed a two-year polishing phase.
The Giant Magellan Telescope will be assembled in a newly built 40,000 square foot facility, and the first adaptive secondary mirror is currently being manufactured in Europe.
If this project is anything like other distant space telescope projects, it may be a while before we see results. But until then, we’ll be looking forward to it.