The telescope has received a total of $205 million from UT and other partners.
AUSTIN, Texas – The University of Texas at Austin is investing $45 million in northern Chile Huge Magellan Telescope having already provided financial support, for a total commitment of $110.3 million.
The GMT is an optical/infrared telescope designed to take a closer look at galaxies of the early Universe and Earth-sized planets, among other wonders. A publication by UT Austin called it “the most powerful telescope in the world”.
Thanks to investments from UT Austin, Harvard University, the University of Arizona, the Carnegie Institution for Science, the University of Chicago and the São Paulo Research Foundation, the telescope now has $205 million in accelerated construction.
“I am pleased that six like-minded partners of the Giant Magellan Telescope have worked together to make an impressive new financial commitment to build the telescope and its instrumentation, and bring the telescope closer to first light,” said Taft Armandoff, director of the McDonald Observatory of UT and vice chairman of the board of the GMT organization, said in a statement. “GMT will provide transformative observation opportunities for our faculty, students and researchers.”
The investment money will go into the telescope’s seven primary mirrors, an instrument called the GMT Near Infrared Spectrograph, and the overall structure, which will measure 12 stories. UT Austin leads the construction of the Spectograph.
“We are honored to receive this investment in our future,” GMT President Robert Shelton said in a statement. “The funding is truly a joint effort by our founders. It will lead to the manufacture of the world’s largest mirrors, the giant telescope mount that holds and aligns them, and a scientific instrument that will allow us to study the chemical evolution of stars and planets like never before.”
https://www.kvue.com/article/news/education/university-of-texas/ut-austin-investment-giant-magellan-telescope/269-6d029bca-2b05-446a-ba95-e01b3e2ab717 UT Austin makes additional investment in revolutionary telescope