Giant Mexican Telescope Launched

SilentOneNCW writes "A new telescope has been unveiled in Mexico by President Vicente Fox. The Large Millimeter Telescope will be used to pick up electromagnetic radiation known as millimetre waves emitted 13 billion years ago, when the first stars burst into existence, astrophysicists say. The $128M telescope is a joint project between Mexico and the US. With an antenna diameter of 164 feet, the LMT dwarfs existing millimetre-wave telescopes and should be able to pick up signals from the faintest objects in outer space."

Comments

Mexican scientists must be humble

[Salvance]

If they are trying to impress people with its size, you'd think they'd come up with a better name than "The Large Millimeter Telescope".

Astronomically scientifically interesting

[0jjjjjjjjjj0]

Actually, it's much more interesting to look at the project's page than just read an article about it.

Some highlights of the anticipated LMT research are outlined below:

• * solar-system planetesimals & planets
• * extra-solar protoplanetary-disks
• * individual Galactic star-forming regions
• * the Galactic nucleus
• * local galaxies
• * active galactic nuclei
• * high-redshift dusty starburst galaxies
• * clusters of galaxies and their large-scale distribution.

This is a rather exciting endeavour for those with interest in anything "out there" as equipment of this magnitude is not readily available. Digging into the "building blocks" of inner and outer space, and everything in between, will no doubt yield some interesting surprises, as Hubble continues to do.

Re:Astronomically scientifically interesting

[NixieBunny]

I work on a couple telescopes of this type in Arizona, the old NRAO 12 meter scope on Kitt Peak and the 10 meter submillimeter scope on Mt. Graham. See them here. It's true that there aren't many scopes of this type available. There are a couple in Europe and one on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

The NSF has sunk nearly all their money into the ALMA array in Chile, and we get the scraps. That's unfortunate because they'll never let students near the ALMA array, since it will cost gazillions of dollars per hour to operate. So it's nice to see another single-dish millimeter wave scope opening.