Thirty meter telescope

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Check it out: http://www.tmt.org/

The current largest optical observatory on earth is the Keck Observatory in Hawaii at 10 meters.

TMT will provide similar crucial complementary measurements for future space-based missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the planned successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), an array of ground-based radio astronomy antennae that will revolutionize astrophysics at sub-millimeter and millimeter wavelengths.

Many of the key scientific questions to be addressed by the next generation giant ground-based telescope are in common with those of JWST and ALMA; the complementary power of state-of-the art telescopes on the ground is largely based on the ability to obtain spectra of extremely faint sources in the optical and near-infrared, and to achieve unprecedented angular resolution.

The goal of the TMT project is to construct an extremely large telescope based on more than 700 hexagonal-shaped mirror segments that stretch a total of 30 meters in diameter. Such a telescope also needs adaptive optics systems that compensate for natural distortions of the incoming light by Earth’s atmosphere, and huge science instruments containing dozens of mirrors, detectors, and complex filters.

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2005/nsf05058/nsf05058.pdf (See page 55)

The TMT would dwarf the existing 8-10m optical/infrared ground-based telescopes, increasing the available light grasp nearly ten-fold and, assuming adaptive correction is used to realize the diffraction limit of the telescope, the angular resolution by a factor of three over the world’s largest telescope. The TMT would utilize major technological breakthroughs in design and routine use of adaptive optics to provide extraordinary improvements over current capabilities. Two competing designs are currently being pursued: (1) a segmented mirror telescope design, which is a similar in concept to the Keck 10m telescope, but with a 30m collecting area; and (2) a smaller (22m) telescope employing seven 8.4m diameter round primary mirror segments.

An interesting video clip: http://www.tmt.org/media/Moyer_CNN_Astronomy.wmv

Renderings: http://www.astro.caltech.edu/observatories/tmt/renders.html