Giant Magellan Telescope Set To Revolutionize Ground-Based Astronomy

StartsWithABang writes: If you want to see farther, deeper and at higher resolution than ever before into the Universe, you need four things: the largest aperture possible, the best-quality optical systems and cameras/CCDs, the least interference from the atmosphere, and the analytical techniques and power to make the most of every photon. While the last three have improved tremendously over the past 25 years, telescope size hasn't increased at all. That's all about to change over the next decade, as three telescopes — the Giant Magellan Telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope — are set to take us from 8-10 meter class astronomy to 25-40 meter class. While the latter two are fighting over funding, construction rights and other political concerns, the Giant Magellan Telescope is already under construction, and is poised to be the first in line to begin the future of ground-based astronomy.

Comments

Yet another Forbes link

[cruff]

Once again we get a link to Forbes ...

Re:Yet another Forbes link

[Mister Transistor]

Yeah, fuck them and their paywall. Didn't read, didn't care enough to try to bypass it. Get used to that, Forbes...

One possible argument for lunar industrialization

[jeffb (2.718)]

It seems like the Moon's surface could be a fantastic place for an absurdly large optical telescope. No significant atmosphere, little or no vibration, low gravity (making for less distortion of the optics), and plentiful raw materials for making fused silica and aluminum surfaces.

Obvious drawbacks: not a good place for humans, a two-week period of daylight (not necessarily a deal-breaker without an atmosphere, but a source of thermal stress), and a REALLY BIG dust problem.

Re:Stop promoting your own articles StartsWithABan

[OzPeter]

The editors of Slashdot should not allow self-promotion. StartsWithABang is Ethan Siegel and we had several of these astronomy and science stories submitted by him that link to his own Forbes articles!

Well given that Forbes doesn't like my ad blocker (and quite a few people on /. run ad blockers for very good reasons) I'd say he's shooting himself in the foot by linking to his own articles on Forbes. He'll never get page views from all of us ad blockers, and eventually someone will post a link to a similar story on an ad blocker friendly site and their page view stats will go up.

But yeah. Shills still exist on /. no matter what whipslash* has said about cleaning them out, and stories like this always seem to bypass the firehouse.

*We loved you Whipslash when you spoke about cleaning up /. but when need to see you follow through on this or we will turn on you and opine about "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".