Mirrors for giant space telescope take shape

[unhappycamper]

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/1207/Mirrors-for-giant-space-telescope-take-shape



Artists rendition: Seven 27-foot mirrors will power the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), designed to peer farther than ever before into the universe from a mountaintop in Chile.

Mirrors for giant space telescope take shape
By Pete Spotts, Staff writer / December 7, 2013

In a lab beneath the University of Arizona's football stadium, researchers have reached a new milestone in their effort to build the world's largest ground-based telescope – the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), destined for a mountaintop in Chile's Atacama Desert.

On Friday, technicians at the Stewart Observatory Mirror Laboratory opened the lid of a large rotating furnace to reveal the third of seven mirrors, each 27 feet wide, that will operate as one mirror 80 feet across to gather light from the dawn of the universe.

The $880-million GMT is one of two projects currently underway to build a new generation of giant ground-based telescopes to explore the early universe, help identify potentially habitable planets in the sun's neighborhood, and help reveal the nature of dark energy, a mysterious force that is propelling the expansion of the universe at an ever increasing rate.

It's an ambitious agenda that has an additional component often overlooked, notes Wendy Freedman, an astronomer and chair of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization's board of directors. New capabilities can lead to unimagined discoveries that can profoundly change humanity's view of the universe.

[defacto7]

1. It's not a space telescope.

It's an earth telescope to view space. Hubble is a space telescope. But I don't mean to be a downer. This telescope is an exciting project.