Construction of World's Largest Optical Telescope Approved 77
The University of Hawaii at Hilo has been granted a permit by the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources to begin construction of the $1.3 billion Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). From the article: "The TMT has been in development for over a decade, but the large amount of land needed for its construction raised concerns over the environmental and cultural impact of such a project. Now, however, the land board has rendered a final decision, saying that the university had satisfied the eight criteria necessary under Hawaiian state law to allow the venture to go forward. The giant TMT will be an optical and infrared telescope with enough coverage area and sharpness to observe light from 13 billion years ago, track extrasolar planets, and observe planets and stars in their early formative years."
Re:Cost (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, strictly speaking you could almost buy two. The average cost per unit of $2.1 billion is mostly born by one time, already sunk development costs, the flyaway cost is a "mere" $0.7 billion.
The reason they're so damn expensive is that the Cold War ended when they were almost finished and most of the money had been spent, meaning instead of building hundreds of the things, they only built 21. A weapon like the B2 is only needed against a well armed and geographically huge opponent, such as the Russia, China or the United States itself, none of which America has the pressing need to bomb in the near future. So they just built a few, made them public as some sort of national prestige stunt for scaring "rogue states" with the threat that a heavy bomber could be flying over their territory without anyone knowing, rather than building en masse to become a credible attack force towards large powers as they were intended.
In contrast fhe F-22 project cost 66 Billion compared to the B-2's 44 Billion, the difference is, they built hundreds of those, so the cost looks lower.
The First Rule of Government Spending (Score:1)
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World's largest optical telescope is $1.3 billion! You could buy half a stealth bomber for that.
Could you see a stealth bomber with the telescope?
Funny abbreviations (Score:4, Insightful)
I know it's in the summary, but why use an abbreviation if it's not immediately clear what the abbreviation stands for?
TMT = Twenty Meter Telescope, Thirty Meter Telescope, Two Mile Telescope (etc.)?
Because "30mT" is not as sezzy?
(Cue flamebait about lazy USians needing TLA's for everything).
(TLA = Three Letter Acronym. Of course)
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I agree
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Quick! You can still lash two of your telescopes together with a belt, call it the Dual Decimeter Telescope, and buy ad time on WWE (who'll probably appreciate the TLA and give you a 1% discount).
Make your friends see stars--give them a DDT(tm).
Re:Funny abbreviations (Score:5, Funny)
Cue flamebait about lazy USians needing TLA's for everything
Shouldn't the be USAians?
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Because "30mT" is not as sezzy?
a 30 milliTesla telescope? if you're trying to impress me, you've failed.
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Hey, that's more Teslas than the other telescopes are bringing to the table!
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I'm just disappointed they didn't call it the Thirty Meter Newtonian Telescope. Everyone could have agreed on that.
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It is written:
Three shall be the number of the letters thou shalt use, and the number of the letters shall be three.
Four letters shalt be not used, neither useth thou two, excepting that thou then addeth one more to make three. Five is right out.
Just be glad it's not the Thirty Meter National Telescope.
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TMT, it's dynamite!
TMT, it'll catch the light!
TMT it's a power load
TMT watching novas explode!
(Apologies to AC/DC)
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1. Get $1.3 billion for TMT
2. Deliver Two Meter Telescope
3. Profit!
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"(Cue flamebait about lazy USians needing TLA's for everything). "
How is a bigoted comment about Mexicans relevant?
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I know it's in the summary, but why use an abbreviation if it's not immediately clear what the abbreviation stands for?
TMT = Twenty Meter Telescope, Thirty Meter Telescope, Two Mile Telescope (etc.)?
This is actually the second TMT that U.Cal and CalTech have been involved in. Before they got the money from the Keck Foundation, what we now know as Keck was the Ten Meter Telescope. ...but they designed new stationery anyway. ;)
Where can I request time on it? (Score:2)
Amazing (Score:2)
I had no idea there were plans for a thirty-meter telescope. Hell, I had no idea such a thing was feasible. Thirty. Meters. I would be very interested to know how the mirror is constructed because it must be an engineering marvel. Hopefully there will be a lot more press about this once construction gets underway.
Given that the largest optical telescope [wikipedia.org] today has an effective aperture a little over 10 meters, this instrument will be a giant leap forward. The best part about it is that, like the Hubble Space
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)
I would be very interested to know how the mirror is constructed because it must be an engineering marvel.
Acording to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
This mirror will be segmented and consist of 492 smaller (1.4 m), individual hexagonal mirrors. The shape of each segment, as well as its position relative to neighboring segments, will be controlled actively.
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Only if you volunteer to get it up.
Even for /. that's an odd way to phrase it.
Careful what you ask for. Lots of people will volunteer, but will the OP pick up the tab?
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1. More expensive (any way you slice it: it would be terribly heavy and thus terribly expensive to get there)
2. Not more detailed [wikipedia.org]
3. Extremely expensive to correct mistakes (anyone remember that blasted piece of tape that f&(^(ked up the polishing of the HST?)
So, no it wouldn't be more effective at a Langrangian point.
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Better places than a Lagrangian point are Antarctica and the moon.
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Informative)
NASA has that covered: the James Web Space Telescope [wikipedia.org] will be at the Earth-Sun L2 point. It is much smaller than 30 meters though: its mirror is 6.5 meters.
You'll also notice that the Webb telescope costs a lot more than the 30-meter telescope, which is another part of the answer to your question. There is enough going on in astronomy today that we need more than one really good telescope. It makes sense to build the multiple telescopes with different properties so they're specialized for different science.
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Search engines are your friend: TMT [tmt.org].
Amazing technology.
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The best part about it is that, like the Hubble Space telescope, we have an idea what it can show us but there will also be lots of findings we *didn't* expect.
I wonder if it will finally be capable of getting a decent picture of Pluto.
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Please, corrective lenses are so passe. It's all about the laser correction these days.
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I wonder how much will the corrector lens cost.
Corrector lenses are cheap - it's the service call that ups the bill.
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* site offices (both project offices and contruction offices)
* laydown areas (these are not for people laying down to have a rest, they are for parts and machinery)
* staff facilities (toilets, changing rooms, catering)
* on site manufacturing (such as making concrete on site)
On the last construction project I worked on, the lay down areas were twice as large as the actual construction.
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IMHO, it should be a condition that the public are given access to the scope site etc.
The last time I was on Big Island, the road that would take you to the base of the volcano where this is to be situated was prohibited to rental vehicles (4WD included). It was full of pot holes but passable with care. I've driven rentals over worse roads of of Hwy 50 in NV.
Get the state to fix this and there would be a source of income to the observatory from Tourists.
Hardly rocket science now is it?
It is a public road, and it's a bad road on purpose. In fact, once you reach a certain elevation, the road is a wonderfully smooth ribbon of concrete - they don't want dust to interfere with the telescopes. They also don't want ridiculous traffic jams beyond what they already have. So the first few miles beyond the visitor center is a terrible gravel road. Most people turn around.
The rental vehicle prohibition is between you and your rental car company. It has nothing to do with the State of Hawaii. I
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But... earlier this year some idiot tourists took their rental sedan up the mountain and forgot to put it in park when they got out. It slowly drove itself off the road and flipped over. It took the state more than a month to be able to get machinery in place to retrieve the wrecked car and take it down the mountain. Guess what - those tourists had to pay for the car AND the removal.
In the interim, it snowed, and the local snowboarders made good use of the car as a jump. There are photos. :)
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In the interim, it snowed, and the local snowboarders made good use of the car as a jump. There are photos. :)
Well? WELL?
Damn you, I want to see those. All I managed to find with quite a bit
of googleing are those [darkerview.com], entirely devoid of both snow and boards.
still limited (Score:1)
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Dude, how much clearer than "diffraction limited adaptive optics design" should it get for you to get it past your thick skull that this design is NOT atmospheric lensing limited. End of story right there. Shut up.
World's Largest? (Score:2)
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Note the E-ELT is in the southern hemisphere, where Hawaii is in the northern hemisphere. Consequently each will be able to see things the other cannot. Hence we need both.
Another Hubble? (Score:1)
Feeding the Troll (Score:2, Informative)
Because it will have a lot more optical clarity than Hubble. There's a distinct limit to the aperature acheivable with space launch. Hubble's beyond it; the shuttle is retired. While space is great for optical bands that are absorbed by the atmosphere, it's worse for *EVERYTHING* else. It costs more, it's slower to design, it's harder to fix, it has hard aperature and focal length limitations, it has bandwidth caps, it has vibration problems, it has thermal stability problems, it has power limitations, it h
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Building even a 10 meter one in space costs WAY more than this one will.
For a given amount of money you'll always get a much larger mirror if you put it on the top of a mountain vs putting it up in space. Either solution is a compromise. There is really room for having both, as I imagine particular problems can be solved by one vs the other. If you're going to build a telescope on Earth it is probably best to either build it really big, or really cheap (both are things which you can't do in space).
I woul
...can you? (Score:1)
Very cool!
> raised concerns over the environmental and cultural impact of such a project
I see no reason to modify my parsimonious theory that it's all about throwing money at people until they go away.
What about these EELT at 39m and (Score:2)
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VLT is already built, and consists of four scopes which can be linked for interferometry in the IR, but don't always function that way. Even when they do, their light-collecting area is smaller than TMT.
EELT is approved but not built, and when built, will be bigger than TMT.
GMT will have an effective aperture and light-collecting area smaller than TMT.
Basically, the TMT folks now have to try to build it before EELT. If they do, it will unquestionably be the largest optical scope in the world for some perio
It seems the biggest obstacle... (Score:3)
But a new resort on the beach is OK? (Score:2)
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they're called midwesterners
Boy, will UH-Hilo be surprised! (Score:2)
Living in Hilo, and working on Mauna Kea, I think the administration of UH-Hilo would have heart attacks if they were ever approved to do anything involving the word "billion." They're constantly struggling to get funding for things like a permanent building for their pharmacy Ph.D program (which would help quite a bit with continuing accreditation). No, the TMT isn't a UH-Hilo project, at all.
It's actually University of California and CalTech (the main partners in Keck), plus ACURA (the Association of Ca
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Oh, there'll definitely be jobs. Some UH-Hilo physics, astronomy or natural science majors will almost certainly wind up there. They'll probably be outnumbered by the Hawaii Community College grads, first in construction trades, then in electronic tech, admin, et cetera.
The control building will be at the summit. If you mean the base facility/office, I've heard it'll be on the corner of Nowelo and A'ohoku, next to Gemini, below CalTech, and across A'ohoku from 'Imiloa.