Giant Magellan Telescope facts for kids
The Giant Magellan Telescope (or GMT) will be the biggest telescope in the world when it's finished in 2025. It won't have just one giant mirror. Instead, it will use seven smaller mirrors that work together. This design helps it gather more light than if it had only one mirror.
Each of these seven mirrors is about 8.4 m (27.6 ft) wide. Together, they will act like one huge mirror, about 24.5 m (80.4 ft) across, making images super clear. The telescope will be able to collect over four times more light than telescopes we have now. It will also produce pictures up to ten times clearer than the Hubble Space Telescope. Building this amazing telescope is expected to cost around $700 million.
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Where will the Giant Magellan Telescope be built?
The Giant Magellan Telescope will be built at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. This observatory is about 115 km (71 mi) northeast of a city called La Serena, Chile.
This spot is great for looking at the sky because it has clear weather for most of the year. The night sky in this area, which is part of the Atacama Desert, is also very clean. There isn't much air pollution or light pollution from cities nearby. All these things make it one of the best places on Earth for astronomical observations over a long time.
How is the Giant Magellan Telescope designed?
The GMT is special because it uses seven mirror pieces, each 8.4 m (27.6 ft) wide. These pieces will be put together to form one large surface that collects light. This is a tricky job because the outer six mirrors are not perfectly round or symmetrical. This means they need a special way of polishing.
All seven mirrors will be lined up so their reflecting surfaces point to a common center. One mirror will be in the middle, and the other six will be placed evenly around it. The plan is to build seven identical mirrors. One extra mirror has already been made. This spare mirror can be used when another mirror needs to be cleaned and recoated, which happens every 1–2 years and takes about 1–2 weeks for each mirror.
The Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona is making these mirrors. They are built in a laboratory located under the university's football stadium. The lab uses a special rotating furnace to create the mirrors. The first mirror was finished being cast on November 3, 2005. The long process of shaping and polishing it was completed in the autumn of 2011.
The telescope will also use something called adaptive optics. This technology helps the telescope correct for any blurriness caused by Earth's atmosphere, making the images even clearer.
Who is building the Giant Magellan Telescope?
Many different groups are working together to build this telescope. Here are some of them:
- Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington
- University of Chicago
- Harvard University
- Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
- Texas A&M University
- University of Arizona
- University of Texas at Austin
- Australian National University
- Astronomy Australia Limited
- Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute
A person named George P. Mitchell and The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation are also helping to pay for the telescope. They are giving $25 million towards the project.
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See also
In Spanish: Telescopio Gigante de Magallanes para niños
