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Construction of world's largest optical telescope approved
CNET ^ | Sunday, April 14, 2013 | Tim Hornyak

Posted on 04/14/2013 8:36:59 PM PDT by Jyotishi

The massive Thirty Meter Telescope will be able to image objects 13 billion light years away, near the beginning of time.

Set atop Mauna Kea, the Thirty Meter Telescope will be able to observe planets outside our solar system. (Credit: Courtesy TMT Observatory Corporation)

If you love eye-popping images of space, here's welcome news: the Hawaiian Board of Land and Natural Resources has backed building what's to be the world's largest, most powerful optical telescope above the clouds atop the volcano Mauna Kea.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will have a primary mirror of 492 segments measuring some 100 feet across, giving it the power to image objects 13 billion light years away, near the beginning of the universe.

It may also photograph planets outside our solar system with unprecedented detail.

The focus of a collaboration among scientists in California, Canada, Japan, China, and India, the instrument will have 144 times the light-collecting area of the Hubble Space Telescope and nearly 10 times that of one of the Keck telescopes.

Despite opposition from some environmentalists and native Hawaiian groups, construction of the next-generation observatory will begin in a year and is expected to cost over $1 billion. The TMT is slated to begin scientific studies in 2021.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Technical; US: Hawaii
KEYWORDS: astronomy; environment; hawaii; maunakea; space; telescope; tmt
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1 posted on 04/14/2013 8:36:59 PM PDT by Jyotishi
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To: Jyotishi

$1 billion, wow. but worth it i bet.

i wonder how they make the glass that large? in pieces that focus on someting like a digital camera or something?

anhyone know how the technology works?


2 posted on 04/14/2013 8:39:21 PM PDT by beebuster2000
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To: Jyotishi

Use Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffets’ money, not mine, to build this stupid thing.


3 posted on 04/14/2013 8:39:41 PM PDT by Rembrandt (Part of the 51% who pay Federal taxes)
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To: Jyotishi
Too bad it's at the bottom of a gravity well under a sea of atmosphere.

/johnny

4 posted on 04/14/2013 8:40:45 PM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: beebuster2000
Paragraph 4 of the above excerpt:

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will have a primary mirror of 492 segments

5 posted on 04/14/2013 8:43:28 PM PDT by null and void (Republicans create the tools of oppression and Democrats use them. Gun confiscation enables tyranny.)
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To: Jyotishi

i looked at the design spec. its not glass, but a series of highly polished mirrors that all reflect onto an electrical eye that captures the image. i cant imagine the precision it must take to make the mirrors, keep them polished in the outdoors on a mountain top a nd then achieve the precision neccesary to focus over 400 of them EXACTLY so you can look out millions of light years. really cool


6 posted on 04/14/2013 8:45:03 PM PDT by beebuster2000
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To: JRandomFreeper

If we had kept going back to the Moon and established a base we could have put a telescope or three on it.


7 posted on 04/14/2013 8:45:16 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (IÂ’m not a Republican, IÂ’m a conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: Rembrandt

Stupid? Really? Scared of it Rembrandt? It is modern day exploration...


8 posted on 04/14/2013 8:45:57 PM PDT by BreezyDog (Illegitimi non carborundum)
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To: Jyotishi

Big reflector

Primary hexagons

Schematics

9 posted on 04/14/2013 8:48:03 PM PDT by null and void (Republicans create the tools of oppression and Democrats use them. Gun confiscation enables tyranny.)
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To: Jack Hydrazine
Radio telescopes on the back side. Isolation pay for the researchers. They will need a good cook. I know someone that cooks well and can stand isolation. And knows a little bit about Smith charts. ;)

/johnny

10 posted on 04/14/2013 8:49:45 PM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: beebuster2000

It is, in a word, AMAZING!


11 posted on 04/14/2013 8:49:46 PM PDT by null and void (Republicans create the tools of oppression and Democrats use them. Gun confiscation enables tyranny.)
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To: beebuster2000

Mauna Kea is a volcano. One eruption, telescope and $1 billion dollars gone...of course that is a better deal than any of Obama’s bailouts.


12 posted on 04/14/2013 8:56:02 PM PDT by GGpaX4DumpedTea (I am a Tea Party descendant...steeped in the Constitutional Republic given to us by the Founders.)
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To: Jyotishi
...near the beginning of time.

Yeah, sure, uh huh, yep.

13 posted on 04/14/2013 8:56:23 PM PDT by RingerSIX (My wife and I took an AIDS vaccine that they offer down at our Church.)
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To: Jyotishi

And just what advantage and how could this top what we get from the hubble space telescope?


14 posted on 04/14/2013 8:57:42 PM PDT by diverteach (If I find liberals in heaven after my death.....I WILL BE PISSED!!!)
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To: GGpaX4DumpedTea

Mauna Kea erupted about 4,500 years ago.


15 posted on 04/14/2013 9:01:49 PM PDT by Jyotishi (Seeking the truth, a fact at a time.)
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To: diverteach
And just what advantage and how could this top what we get from the hubble space telescope?

It's much larger and thus has far more light-gathering capability than Hubble.

And adaptive optics techniques that constantly and automatically compensate for atmospheric distortion mow greatly reduce the advantage of optical space telescopes over ground-based ones.

16 posted on 04/14/2013 9:04:17 PM PDT by Strategerist
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To: beebuster2000
i wonder how they make the glass that large?

Very carefully!

17 posted on 04/14/2013 9:04:57 PM PDT by smokingfrog ( ==> sleep with one eye open (<o> ---)
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To: diverteach

The Hubble Space Telescope has a primary mirror with a with an eight foot diameter mirror. Compare this to the 100 foot mirror of this new telescope.


18 posted on 04/14/2013 9:05:35 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (IÂ’m not a Republican, IÂ’m a conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: Strategerist

If they could put this telescope on the Moon just think about how far it could peer into the universe.


19 posted on 04/14/2013 9:06:38 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (IÂ’m not a Republican, IÂ’m a conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: beebuster2000

http://spie.org/x31116.xml

I imagine the process is similar to this.

http://mirrorlab.as.arizona.edu/about


20 posted on 04/14/2013 9:09:50 PM PDT by smokingfrog ( ==> sleep with one eye open (<o> ---)
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