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Construction of World's Largest Optical Telescope Approved
The University of Hawaii at Hilo has been granted a permit by the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources to begin construction of the $1.3 billion Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). From the article: "The TMT has been in development for over a decade, but the large amount of land needed for its construction raised concerns over the environmental and cultural impact of such a project. Now, however, the land board has rendered a final decision, saying that the university had satisfied the eight criteria necessary under Hawaiian state law to allow the venture to go forward. The giant TMT will be an optical and infrared telescope with enough coverage area and sharpness to observe light from 13 billion years ago, track extrasolar planets, and observe planets and stars in their early formative years."
World's largest optical telescope is $1.3 billion! You could buy half a stealth bomber for that.
I know it's in the summary, but why use an abbreviation if it's not immediately clear what the abbreviation stands for?
TMT = Twenty Meter Telescope, Thirty Meter Telescope, Two Mile Telescope (etc.)?
Because "30mT" is not as sezzy?
(Cue flamebait about lazy USians needing TLA's for everything).
(TLA = Three Letter Acronym. Of course)
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Slots will fill up fast, how to I reserve time? Why wait until it is actually built.
I had no idea there were plans for a thirty-meter telescope. Hell, I had no idea such a thing was feasible. Thirty. Meters. I would be very interested to know how the mirror is constructed because it must be an engineering marvel. Hopefully there will be a lot more press about this once construction gets underway.
Given that the largest optical telescope today has an effective aperture a little over 10 meters, this instrument will be a giant leap forward. The best part about it is that, like the Hubble Space telescope, we have an idea what it can show us but there will also be lots of findings we *didn't* expect.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Please, corrective lenses are so passe. It's all about the laser correction these days.
Summation 2
More to the point, is there a point?
I'm all for more telescopes, but wouldn't putting a better (relative to the ones in orbit) telescope in orbit be superior?
I doubt they'd be able to negate the atmosphere by simply making them bigger. I suppose they are easier to repair, but that is a design problem not a performance problem.
Maybe AC's referring to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Flawed_mirror
"he large amount of land needed for its construction"
900m^2 isn't that much, is it?
I wonder how much will the corrector lens cost.
Corrector lenses are cheap - it's the service call that ups the bill.
IMHO, it should be a condition that the public are given access to the scope site etc.
The last time I was on Big Island, the road that would take you to the base of the volcano where this is to be situated was prohibited to rental vehicles (4WD included). It was full of pot holes but passable with care. I've driven rentals over worse roads of of Hwy 50 in NV.
Get the state to fix this and there would be a source of income to the observatory from Tourists.
Hardly rocket science now is it?
No matter how big and awesome it is, it still has to view everything through the atmosphere so it's very limited in what it can do compared to one in orbit.
Maybe there is another, larger one that got approved a few months ago?
Why not just build another Hubble style device at that cost. Yeah, it would likely be more because we are talking about putting it in space too, but while we are still dealing with atmosphere issues and increasing air quality problems from Asia, maybe it would be better to just build a 20meter one in space? Especially if it is very modular and you could just continue to add on parts over the years predicting that we are likely to just send robots into space to do the operations instead of humans.
Not an issue, since Photoshop can automatically fix the aberrations for you.
What advantage will there be in having an extra, less powerful telescope? I want the 30 meter telescope canceled, and to put up the money for a larger successor to the E-ELT. Maybe a 60 or 100 meter telescope successor. That could get a lot of science done per dollar for decades.
Because it will have a lot more optical clarity than Hubble. There's a distinct limit to the aperature acheivable with space launch. Hubble's beyond it; the shuttle is retired. While space is great for optical bands that are absorbed by the atmosphere, it's worse for *EVERYTHING* else. It costs more, it's slower to design, it's harder to fix, it has hard aperature and focal length limitations, it has bandwidth caps, it has vibration problems, it has thermal stability problems, it has power limitations, it has pointing challenges, it has shit flying into it at speeds that would be hypersonic in the atmosphere, it has radiation problems, and it has "science fair project" political problems.
Very cool!
> raised concerns over the environmental and cultural impact of such a project
I see no reason to modify my parsimonious theory that it's all about throwing money at people until they go away.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Extremely_Large_Telescope at 39m http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/vlt.html at 4 x 8.2m and my favorite mainly because of it's sheer size http://www.gmto.org/ at 6 x 8.4m
to a thirty meter telescope these days, is not the size, but getting the necessary environmental and cultural licensing. For a freaking telescope. We're done doing great things, i think.
Yeah, except the best anti-aberration and fixing plugins are only legally allowed to be sold to CSI departments. The rest of us peasants can only wonder what is between the pixels in images.
I'm all for more telescopes, but wouldn't putting a better (relative to the ones in orbit) telescope in orbit be superior?
How are you going to build a thirty meter telescope in space? That's just HUGE. We have adaptive optics now that adjust for atmospheric lensing.
I would prefer it be named the Thirty Meter Ninja Telescope!
I cannot understand how there would be any "environmental and cultural impact" of such a telescope compared the monstrosities on beaches of Hawaii....
'one of the largest' not 'the largest'
Living in Hilo, and working on Mauna Kea, I think the administration of UH-Hilo would have heart attacks if they were ever approved to do anything involving the word "billion." They're constantly struggling to get funding for things like a permanent building for their pharmacy Ph.D program (which would help quite a bit with continuing accreditation). No, the TMT isn't a UH-Hilo project, at all.
It's actually University of California and CalTech (the main partners in Keck), plus ACURA (the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy, not Honda's sporty brand, sorry), Japan, China, India, the NSF, and maybe whoever else wants to jump in at this point now that things are approved. A mere $3.57 million might be enough to get yourself a 1-night-a-year slice of the pie. ;)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Why buy one, when you can have two for twice the price?