AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin is investing $45 million in northern Chile's Giant Magellan Telescope after already providing financial backing, making for a total commitment of $110.3 million.
The GMT is an optical/infrared telescope that aims to take a closer look at early universe galaxies and Earth-sized planets, among other wonders. A release from UT Austin called it "the world's most powerful telescope."
The telescope now has $205 million for accelerated construction 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.
“I am delighted that six like-minded partners in the Giant Magellan Telescope have worked together to make an impressive new financial commitment toward building the telescope and its instrumentation, propelling the telescope closer to first light,” Taft Armandroff, director of UT's McDonald Observatory and GMT Organization board's vice chair, said in a statement. “GMT will provide transformational observing capabilities to our faculty, students and researchers.”
The investment money will go toward the telescope's seven primary mirrors, an instrument called the GMT Near Infrared Spectrograph and the overall structure, which measures 12 stories. UT Austin is leading the Spectograph's construction.
'We are honored to receive this investment in our future,” GMT president Robert Shelton said in a statement. “The funding is truly a collaborative effort from our founders. It will result in the fabrication of the world’s largest mirrors, the giant telescope mount that holds and aligns them, and a science instrument that will allow us to study the chemical evolution of stars and planets like never before.”