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Possible
design concept for the GSMT. The mirror is roughly the same
size as a baseball diamond.
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The
Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT), a ground- based telescope
with a mirror approximately 30 meters in diameter, will provide
a major advance in ground-based astronomy over the world's largest
optical telescopes. The GSMT will have 10 times the light-collecting
area of each of the twin Keck Telescopes in Hawaii, which now rank
as the world's largest, and more than 20 times the collecting area
of the NGST. With its much greater mirror size, the GSMT will play
the same role with respect to the NGST that the Keck Telescopes
do for the Hubble Space Telescope. The GSMT will investigate in
greater detail the cosmic sources of radiation that the space-borne
telescope discovers.
Because
the GSMT will remain on Earth, it can profit from ongoing improvements
in its complement of instruments, including marvelously precise
spectrographs that will measure the amounts of radiation at different
wavelengths. While it observes the cosmos in visible light and infrared
radiation,the GSMT will employ an advanced system of adaptive optics.
This system will continuously monitor the atmospheric fluctuations
that would blur the telescope's vision, and it will then readjust
the mirror surface many times per second in order to compensate
for these ripples in the air. With this approach, and with a much
larger mirror, the GSMT can obtain deep images in the short-wavelength
portion of the infrared domain that are even crisper and deeper
than those obtained by the NGST. Although it cannot observe galaxies
as early in their history as the NGST can, the GSMT will have the
infrared observing capability to follow the evolution of galaxies
through all eras after the formation stage. It will be able to trace
galactic history back to 10 billion years ago or earlier. In addition
to galaxies, the GSMT will observe the closest planetary systems
and star-forming regions within our Milky Way Galaxy.
The
GSMT's great primary mirror will consist of individual segments,
each as large as a good-sized astronomical telescope. The pioneering
development of the Keck Telescopes' 10--meter mirrors, each of which
consists of 36 individual segments, has led to the construction
of other segmented-mirror instruments within a now highly developed
technological framework. Technological progress should enable production
of a 30-meter mirror capable of adaptive-optics readjustments at
a reasonable cost.
Visit
the Aura New Initiatives Page
Visit
the California Extremely Large Telescope Project Site
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