Enclosure for ‘world’s most powerful telescope’ ready for construction

The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) and IDOM announced earlier today the housing of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), which has successfully passed its final design review and is now ready for construction in Chile.

GMT is expected to be the largest and most advanced astronomical facility in the world, according to a GMTO company release.

The telescope will feature a 25.4 meter primary mirror made up of seven of the world’s largest mirrors and will offer ten times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The statement said 40% of construction work is already underway and is expected to be operational by the early 2030s.

“A team of ten international experts in the field validated two years of design work by IDOM and the giant Magellan telescope. The final enclosure design is unique and represents a significant feat of technical management, design and engineering,” said Bruce Bigelow, Telescope Site Infrastructure, Enclosure and Facilities Manager. giant Magellan.

“We are also extremely excited to move into the procurement stage, where we will begin soliciting proposals to begin construction. »

Energize the study of the universe

The telescope will also be equipped with high-resolution images, further enabling detailed studies of celestial objects, exploration of distant exoplanets for signs of life, and observation of the early universe to understand the formation and the evolution of galaxies.

The organization says the GMT will provide ten times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope, enabling extremely detailed images of celestial objects.

Additionally, the telescope will be equipped with a suite of high-resolution imagers and spectrographs, enabling a wide range of scientific investigations ranging from detailed studies of individual stars to large-scale sky studies.

The recent announcement confirms that the telescope enclosure has successfully passed its final design review and is ready for construction in Chile, marking a notable step towards operational status in the early 2030s.

Huge ground-based telescope in Chile will be ready in the early 2030s

Overall, GMT has been described as a massive ground-based telescope designed for advanced astronomical observations, featuring seven large mirrors and advanced optical technologies.

A 65 meter high structure will house the GMT of the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. This location was chosen for its ideal conditions for astronomical observations due to clear skies, minimal light pollution and stable atmospheric conditions.

Las Campanas Observatory is located in the southern Atacama Desert, known for offering some of the best observing conditions in the world.

The telescope enclosure is designed to be one of the largest mechanized buildings ever constructed. It will be capable of completing a full rotation in four minutes and will feature 46-meter-high shuttered doors to protect the telescope and allow unobstructed observations.

“Our team took on the challenge of the Giant Magellan Telescope enclosure knowing that this structure would be responsible for some of the most important scientific discoveries of our lifetimes,” said Tom Lorentz, North American president of IDOM.

“We are proud to have delivered a successful design and look forward to the success of the Giant Magellan Telescope.”

Plans to build a next-generation extremely large telescope

Bruce Bigelow, head of site infrastructure, enclosure and facilities for the Giant Magellan Telescope, said: Interesting engineering that the goal of the telescope is to build a next-generation extremely large telescope, capable of undertaking a 50-year program of cutting-edge astronomical observations.

“The product of the observatory is scientific data, and all observatory systems (instruments, telescopes, optics, enclosures and control systems) must operate with high reliability to accomplish the scientific mission,” he said. he declares.

“This is particularly important for the telescope enclosure, as it operates 24 hours a day.
hours a day, 365 days a year. An operational team of 100 people will plan and execute science and maintenance activities from the base of the Giant Magellan Telescope, which will be located in La Serena, Chile.

He explained that during the day, the enclosure would protect the telescope from the sun as well as bad weather. On clear nights, the enclosure opens and controls the movement of air around the telescope, to prevent shaking of the telescope which would degrade image quality.

“The housing was designed for high reliability and, beyond that, to enable efficient maintenance of the hundreds of computer-controlled systems that operate the telescope and the housing.”

Bigelow says the most interesting parts of the GMT enclosure to him personally are its seismic robustness, or “resilience,” implying that it could survive earthquakes in addition to avoiding seismic damage and rapid return. to operations.

This feature was achieved through careful design of the structural elements (beams) and the joints between them.

“The goal of this design process, achieved by the IDOM designer, is to maintain seismic structural performance in the ‘elastic’ regime,” Bigelow said.