14 DAY TRIAL // Over the next few months, engineers working at the Carnegie Institution's Las Campanas Observatory, in the Chilean Andes, will blast away more than 3 million cubic feet (84,950 cubic meters) of rock from the mountaintop that will host the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT).
This instrument will have four times the light-collecting abilities of any existing observatory today, and will boast a 25-meter main mirror, as well as a 21.4-meter (70.2-foot) secondary one. This will give it a collecting area of 368 square meters (3,961 square feet).
The GMT will therefore be the largest telescope in the world, a title that it will only retain until the European Southern Observatory (ESO) finishes building its new flagship instrument, the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).
In order for the GMT to be built, it requires a flat plateau. This is why construction workers are currently getting ready to level an entire mountaintop so that they can make room for the enormous installation. A total of 70 controlled blasts will be needed in all.
Las Campanas Observatory was selected to host the GMT because it is one of the most well suited sites in the world for conducting astronomical investigations. Dark skies and extremely low levels of precipitations make it easier to conduct observations all year around.
“Today marks a historic step toward constructing an astronomical telescope larger than any in existence today,” the Chair of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization, Dr. Wendy Freedman, said at the inauguration ceremony.
“Years of testing have shown that Las Campanas is one of the premier observatory sites in the world and the Carnegie Institution is proud to host the GMT,” adds the official, who is also the director of the Carnegie Observatories.
“The GMT will play an important role in helping us understand the Universe and our place in the cosmos,” added the director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Dr. Charles Alcock.
When completed, the GMT will be able to peer very far back in time, to the point where the first galaxies, stars and black holes appeared. At the same time, it will be able to investigate exoplanetary systems located nearby, and probe the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
The GMT partnership includes the Carnegie Institution for Science, CfA, Australian National University, Astronomy Australia Limited, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, Texas A&M University, the University of Arizona, the University of Chicago, and the University of Texas in Austin.