WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL TELESCOPE READY FOR CONSTRUCTION

What is it? The Giant Magellan Telescope

Where is it? Chile

When will it be completed? Early 2030s

Did you know? When completed it will deliver up to 200 times the power of today’s best telescopes

Construction is now ready to start on the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile, which will be one of the world’s largest astronomical facilities when completed.

Architecture and Engineering firm IDOM recently completed the final design review. When completed, the 65m-tall enclosure will be one of the largest mechanised buildings ever constructed.

At over 5,000 metric tons, the enclosure will be able to complete a full rotation in four minutes and be equipped with 46m-tall shutter doors that reveal the 25.4-m telescope for unobstructed scientific observations. The smart building is designed to control the telescope’s operating environment by protecting seven of the world’s largest mirrors as they track celestial objects across the sky more than a billion light years away. IDOM began developing the Giant Magellan Telescope enclosure design over two years ago following a global search and extensive evaluation process.

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

Construction of the telescope components housed within the enclosure are advancing rapidly. For example, over the past year, fabrication commenced on the seventh and final primary mirror in Arizona, US, while manufacturing of the 39m-tall mount structure began in Illinois, US. Other advancements include near completion of the telescope’s first adaptive secondary mirror and significant progress on a suite of high-resolution imagers and spectrographs in the US states of Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and Texas.

These optical technologies will enable the Giant Magellan to boast a remarkable tenfold increase in resolution compared to the Hubble Space Telescope and deliver up to 200 times the power of today’s best telescopes.

Giant Magellan is the work of the GMTO Corporation, an international consortium of 14 universities and research institutions. The telescope is being built in America and will be reassembled and completed in Chile by the early 2030s.

With the enclosure design milestone complete, the Giant Magellan Telescope is now preparing a global search for a firm to construct the enclosure.

PICTURE CREDITS: GIANT MAGELLAN TELESCOPE – GMTO CORPORATION AND IDOM.