Machines even more powerful than the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) should be operational by the end of this decade.
We’re talking about the Giant Magellanic Telescope (GMT), which just received a new $205 million investment to speed up its construction.
The main mirror of the facility will have a diameter of 25 m and will consist of seven 8.4 m segments. It will have a light-gathering area 10 times that of the James Webb and provide four times sharper images.
The size will give the telescope the title of space device with the largest mirror ever built in history. It will also be 200 times more powerful than the observatories active on Earth today.
But don’t think that GMT will be a replacement. Unlike the Hubble and Webb telescopes, it will be installed on the planet’s surface – more specifically at the Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert (Chile).
In fact, it will complement JWST research by examining the physics and chemistry of fainter light sources previously discovered by its predecessor.
Construction has already begun on six of the Magellanic Telescope’s seven primary mirror segments, and the area where the machines will be installed has already been cleared. The funding is intended to give the project a boost.
The Carnegie Institution for Science, the universities of Harvard, Chicago, Texas, all American institutions, as well as the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) in Brazil contributed with the value.
FAPESP’s US$45 million contribution will allow Brazilian researchers to allocate time to use the telescope. There is no forecast for the start of GMT operations yet, but researchers hope to get the first images by 2029.
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