Adaptive Thirty Meter Telescope Sees Progress 61
Hugh Pickens writes "Caltech and the University of California have been making progress toward the development and construction of the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT) with the recent $200 million commitment from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The core of the TMT Observatory will be a wide-field, alt-az Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a 492 segment, 30 meter diameter primary mirror, a fully active secondary mirror and an articulated tertiary mirror. TMT will be the first ground-based astronomy telescope designed with adaptive optics as an integral system element that will sense atmospheric turbulence in real-time, correct the optical beam of the telescope to remove its effect, and enable true diffraction-limited imaging on the ground. TMT will have 144 times the collecting area of the Hubble Space Telescope and a spatial resolution at near-infrared and longer wavelengths more than ten times better, equivalent to observing above the Earth's atmosphere for many observations at a fraction of the cost of a space-based observatory. TMT will reach further and see more clearly than previous telescopes by a factor of 10 to 100 depending on the observation and will be a fundamental tool for the investigation of large-scale structure in the young universe including the era in which most of the stars and heavy elements were formed."
Sure, they build 30-meter telescopes (Score:2, Funny)
Re:$200 million? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stupid telescope names (Score:5, Funny)
"Why yes, I DO operate the Ginormousely Absurd You-Can't-Believe-How-Fucking-Huge-It-Is Oversized-By-Any-Reasonable-Standard-Of-Measurement-And-By-Most-Unreasonable-Ones-As-Well Motherfucking Large Telescope"
Re:Adaptive Thirty Meter Telescope Sees Progress.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sure, they build 30-meter telescopes (Score:1, Funny)
That's [a] gross! (sorry - had to be done or I'd be thinking about it all day)
It is not surprising... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yes, But (Score:2, Funny)