Mauna Kea in Hawaii has beaten off competition from Cerro Armazones, in Chile's Atacama desert, to host the Thirty Meter Telescope. Henry Yang, chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and chair of the telescope's board of directors, announced the winning site on 21 July. The decision has been two years in the making, he said.
Mauna Kea, which already hosts many other telescopes, was picked over its Chilean rival for its superior observing climate. It is higher and drier, has less atmospheric turbulence, and its average temperature fluctuates less through the year and over a day, notes board member Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Construction of the telescope, which will cost around US$1 billion, is scheduled to begin in 2011 and end in 2018.
My brother just remarked, after telling him about this, was the telescope a refractor or reflector.
Can you imagine trying to build a refractor with a 30m diameter triplet lens!!!!!!
I wouldn't like the job of figuring the lenses....grinding them to right shape, polishing then fitting them together with an oil layer between them!!!!. Then sticking the whole assembly into a carbon fibre OTA. What f ratio would you use....even f5 would make the scope 150m long!!!. Can you imagine f7 or f8, worse still f12 or larger!!!
You'd never use it visually. Can you imagine fitting a 3 or 4 inch focuser on the end of that thing!!!!.
