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Giant Magellan Telescope to Be 10X Sharper than Hubble Telescope
Sunday, August 25, 2013 10:57
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The Giant Magellan Telescope mirror, the third of the seven primary mirrors planned for the observatory, will be 27 feet across and weigh 20 tons when complete.
It will be forged from chunks of borosilicate glass subjected to temperatures of 2,140 degrees Fahrenheit inside a rotating furnace Saturday at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory Mirror Lab in Tucson.
Once cast and polished, these seven mirrors will be arranged to function as a single mirror 80 feet in diameter, giving the $700 million GMT a resolving power 10 times greater than that of NASA’s famous Hubble Space Telescope once the new instrument is up and running in northern Chile in 2020
An artist’s illustration of the completed Giant Magellan Telescope atop Las Campanas Peak in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The 82-foot (24.5-meter) telescope will be one of the largest on Earth when it is completed in 2018. (Giant Magellan Telescope – GMTO Corporation)
By Mike Wall / Space.com
Fox-News
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