Work Begins on the World's Largest Telescope

[Tuckerfan]

Let’s see 'em try to do this at Lenscrafters!

Expert mirror makers are gearing up to cast the first component of what is planned be the world’s largest telescope. When completed, its seven 8.4-metre mirrors will more than quadruple the power of today’s best observatories.

Like other multiple-dish instruments, such as the four 8-metre dishes of the Very Large Telescope in Chile, the planned Giant Magellan Telescope will take advantage of its expansive surface area to boost its sensitivity to light.

But unlike the VLT, the GMT will arrange its multiple mirrors into a single "super dish” - with one mirror at the centre and the other six curved around it like petals. Such “off-axis” mirrors have never been made as large as this.

The design makes the telescope’s vision keener than it would be if all seven mirrors remained separate. It will have 10 times the resolving power of the Hubble Space Telescope.

[MaxTheVool]

The precision with which mirrors that big have to be built is truly hilarious. They have to account for all sorts of things, like droop-due-to-gravity, etc. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were sensitive enough that the bloody coriolis effect kicked in

[Rhubarb]

@MaxTheVool

The precision with which mirrors that big have to be built is truly hilarious. They have to account for all sorts of things, like droop-due-to-gravity, etc. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were sensitive enough that the bloody coriolis effect kicked in

No problem. Just put it at the South Pole. Air’s thinner there anyway.

[slortar]

Yeah, but how big of an ant could you fry with it?

[Johnny_L.A]

I recently heard about a plan by SETI to use old-style TV satellite dishes (the big ones they used to have) to make a large radio telescope array. IIRC it is going to be either a mile square or a km square.