Astronomy 302

Lecture 19

Future Large Telescopes

1.0 FUTURE LARGE OPTICAL/IR TELESCOPES AT STEWARD

There are many large future telescopes planned



1.1 The Giant Magellan Telescope

The GMT is like a huge version of the LBT. But instead of 2 8.4m mirrors the GMT will utilize 7 8.4m --off axis mirrors -- to form one giant 24m telescope.


an artist's image of the GMT






see here for a movie       movie with sound explaining the GMT


The main highlights of the GMT is that if you make one mirror you likely finish the telescope! Right now the Steward mirror lab is hard at work making the first mirror for the GMT.




the hard part is how do you test an off-axis mirror this big! You build a massive test tower in the mirror lab.

1.2 The TMT (thirty meter telescope)

like a big Keck it will have 30 m primary mirror





The biggest difference between TMT and GMT is that the TMT will have many (~700) ~1m segments while the GMT will have 7 8.4m ones.

1.2 ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submm Array)

  ALMA is a very large array of 12m mm and submm telescopes that can act as one huge telescope








Alma should be able to see the hot/cool dust around stars
and see the planet formation process first hand!