Giant magellan telescope - approval of construction phase

[Hans Tucker (Hans)]

The largest optical telescope has been given the go ahead for construction. The Australian National University (ANU) is one of the partners.

http://www.gmto.org/2015/06/giant-ma...ruction-phase/

[Atmos (Colin)]

I really wanted them to build OWL (Overwhelmingly Large Telescope) which in its initial design was a 100m aperture telescope! A hundred metre aperture!!!!

[Hans Tucker (Hans)]

I think the OWL project suffered when they were shutting down a lot of observatories in europe. 100M is ambitious but not impossible.

[Atmos (Colin)]

Originally Posted by Hans Tucker

I think the OWL project suffered when they were shutting down a lot of observatories in europe. 100M is ambitious but not impossible.

100m is expensive. The most expensive astronomical system to date (built) is ALMA at about $1.2 Billion. From memory (don't quite me on this) but OWL was hitting the $5 Billion mark or so.

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Good to see this moving ahead. When we were in Hawaii recently there is a lot of talk about the TMT (Thirty Metre Telescope) that is going on Mauna Kea. They have halted work due to the protests but it should noted that when I was on the mountain the number of protesters was about a dozen.

From discussion with people involved (including the guys who was "leading" the protest on the mountain) the builders have acceded to the demands made,
in that they will remove some telescopes, but the next step which is sending up a rock crusher to prepare the site is in limbo. This is because the protest leader has said he will not do anything to prevent individuals taking action against the rock crusher. It is such a big piece of equipment that it takes 3 days to get to the summit and once it is on the road, it cannot stop moving or it will simply slide back down.

All goes to show that big astronomy is a lot more than just building big scopes!!

Malcolm