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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."
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
Actually, strictly speaking you could almost buy two. The average cost per unit of $2.1 billion is mostly born by one time, already sunk development costs, the flyaway cost is a "mere" $0.7 billion.
The reason they're so damn expensive is that the Cold War ended when they were almost finished and most of the money had been spent, meaning instead of building hundreds of the things, they only built 21. A weapon like the B2 is only needed against a well armed and geographically huge opponent, such as the Russia, China or the United States itself, none of which America has the pressing need to bomb in the near future. So they just built a few, made them public as some sort of national prestige stunt for scaring "rogue states" with the threat that a heavy bomber could be flying over their territory without anyone knowing, rather than building en masse to become a credible attack force towards large powers as they were intended.
In contrast fhe F-22 project cost 66 Billion compared to the B-2's 44 Billion, the difference is, they built hundreds of those, so the cost looks lower.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Maybe AC's referring to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Flawed_mirror
World's largest optical telescope is $1.3 billion! You could buy half a stealth bomber for that.
Could you see a stealth bomber with the telescope?
I wonder how much will the corrector lens cost.
Corrector lenses are cheap - it's the service call that ups the bill.
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.
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.
Note the E-ELT is in the southern hemisphere, where Hawaii is in the northern hemisphere. Consequently each will be able to see things the other cannot. Hence we need both.
Adaptive optics. They work. Google it. It is expected to have 10x the resolution of Hubble.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
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.
All large construction sites have things like:
* site offices (both project offices and contruction offices)
* laydown areas (these are not for people laying down to have a rest, they are for parts and machinery)
* staff facilities (toilets, changing rooms, catering)
* on site manufacturing (such as making concrete on site)
On the last construction project I worked on, the lay down areas were twice as large as the actual construction.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
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.
I cannot understand how there would be any "environmental and cultural impact" of such a telescope compared the monstrosities on beaches of Hawaii....
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?
It is a public road, and it's a bad road on purpose. In fact, once you reach a certain elevation, the road is a wonderfully smooth ribbon of concrete - they don't want dust to interfere with the telescopes. They also don't want ridiculous traffic jams beyond what they already have. So the first few miles beyond the visitor center is a terrible gravel road. Most people turn around.
The rental vehicle prohibition is between you and your rental car company. It has nothing to do with the State of Hawaii. If you feel like taking your rental car to the top, go right ahead. You will find that you are probably only one of a dozen FWD sedans on the top of the mountain. But... earlier this year some idiot tourists took their rental sedan up the mountain and forgot to put it in park when they got out. It slowly drove itself off the road and flipped over. It took the state more than a month to be able to get machinery in place to retrieve the wrecked car and take it down the mountain. Guess what - those tourists had to pay for the car AND the removal. You want to take that risk? Go ahead. Just remember that there aren't very many parking spaces up at the top of a mountain.
I highly recommend finding a way to get up there though - perhaps one of the many tour companies that do it? In fact, I think you'll find it to be a better experience. Most of those tours will get you up there so you can walk around a bit and watch the sun set. Then they take you down the mountain a bit to a secluded enough spot and give you an hour or more for stargazing - along with a very knowledgeable guide and a $10,000 telescope. The temperature will be well below freezing, so they also bring warm weather clothes for you - something you probably didn't bring on your trip to Hawaii.
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.
But... earlier this year some idiot tourists took their rental sedan up the mountain and forgot to put it in park when they got out. It slowly drove itself off the road and flipped over. It took the state more than a month to be able to get machinery in place to retrieve the wrecked car and take it down the mountain. Guess what - those tourists had to pay for the car AND the removal.
In the interim, it snowed, and the local snowboarders made good use of the car as a jump. There are photos. :)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
In the interim, it snowed, and the local snowboarders made good use of the car as a jump. There are photos. :)
Well? WELL?
Damn you, I want to see those. All I managed to find with quite a bit
of googleing are those, entirely devoid of both snow and boards.
Dude, how much clearer than "diffraction limited adaptive optics design" should it get for you to get it past your thick skull that this design is NOT atmospheric lensing limited. End of story right there. Shut up.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Why buy one, when you can have two for twice the price?