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Man Behind The Thirty Metre Telescope

Posted by timothy on from the observe-your-neighbors-discreetly dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "Astronomer Richard Ellis of Caltech talks about the planned Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT), with nine times the resolution of the world's largest existing telescopes, which will be able to locate earth-like planets for the first time, here"

2 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. A link more informative by Wardish · · Score: 4, Informative

    No offense to the Anonomous Coward but... (gotta love that line...)

    I'm more interested in the telescope/project than the astronomer.

    http://www.astro.caltech.edu/observatories/tmt/

    Hmmmm.... Thorazine....

    --
    Ward

    . Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
  2. More Information on the Thirty Meter Telescope by mperrin · · Score: 5, Informative
    The original article is rather low on actual technical information, being instead just an interview with Richard Ellis, and while Richard is a great guy, he's only one of (very!) many individuals working to make the thirty meter telescope a reality.

    I thought I'd introduce some more facts into the discussion. There were, until recently, two major independent efforts to develop a 30 m optical/IR telescope:

    Both have done design studies and both came up with fairly similar designs. Given the reality that this telescope is going to cost something north of $600 million dollars when all is said and done, the two groups have recently decided to pool all their efforts, signing an cooperation agreement back in August.

    As part of this, both groups applied for about $35M of funding for the next stage of the development, which will involve doing more detailed design studies, simulations, and construction of subsystem mockups to test performance. The plan is after about three years of this to have a completed design and then be able to break ground around 2008 or so, and become operational around a decade from now.

    Incidentally, NOAO asked for their $35M from the National Science Foundation, while the UC/Caltech team approached the Moore Foundation, Gordon Moore's philanthropic organization. So a tiny fraction of every dollar you spend on an Intel chip may someday help to make this telescope a reality!