Thirty Meter Telescope Will See Deep Space More Clearly-12x more than Hubble

[Ichingcarpenter]

SANTA CRUZ, California — Four hundred years after Galileo’s telescope revolutionized humanity’s view of the universe, a gigantic telescope is in the works that could take us to a new, deeper level of understanding.

The enormous Thirty Meter Telescope, with a primary mirror the size of a blue whale, is part of a new generation of super powerful ground-based telescopes. Scheduled for completion in 2018, it will have nine times the collecting power of the Keck telescopes and 12 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. From its recently selected location atop the volcanic dome of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the pioneering telescope will provide an extremely detailed look at the universe.


The new TMT will also be able to see further back in time than any previous telescope, all the way back to the formation of the first stars and galaxies that followed the universe’s “Dark Ages.”


An adaptive optics system will aid the telescope’s ability to see into deep space. Atmospheric turbulence usually distorts light coming from distant stars. So the adaptive optics system uses a sodium laser to probe current conditions, and information about the turbulence is fed into a small deformable mirror, which makes real-time corrections to the atmosphere’s quivering. The effect is sort of like putting glasses on to correct for blurred vision — the end result is a much crisper image.

Once finished, the new telescope will allow astronomers to see faint objects clearer than ever before. It will be able to focus on and indentify extremely distant structures that currently appear as blurry smudges in the Hubble Deep Field. As yet, no one knows what these objects are.




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[DrDan]

1. a deformable mirror - incredible

[Fumesucker]

9. Deformable mirrors have been around for a little while now..

Keck uses such a system, it saw first light in 2002.

http://keckobservatory.org/index.php/news/worlds_largest_telescope_creates_a_virtual_star_over_hawaii/

[DavidDvorkin]

2. Wonderful

I always wish it didn't have to take so long to design, build, and install such instruments. I wish it were operating now.

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. I wish to live long enough to see some of the results

for many years


Hubble was an eye opener and this will be even more so.

We have just begun to look at our universe.

[Posteritatis]

6. Observatory-grade mirrors are terrifyingly difficult to make properly

I imagine a lot of the astronomy community's still sort of traumatized by the original debacle with Hubble, and nowadays they're working with tolerances that make any mirror in my house look like a gravel driveway by comparison. It's mindboggling.

[DavidDvorkin]

8. Wait till there's an optical observatory on the moon with a mirror

consisting of a giant rotating dish filled with mercury.

But it could be a long wait.

[localroger]

12. Actually, they make your mirror look. more like a quarry

If Hubble's mirror was the size of the Gulf of Mexico, the largest deviation from its (incorrect but usable) curve would be 1/4 inch. The tolerances on the Hubble corrective mirrors that fixed the problem, which are much smaller, are even more amazing. That it is possible to tug on glass with hydraulic cylinders to make it adapt to the atmosphere just blows my mind, but there are limits (the atmosphere doesn't transmit certain wavelengths and you can't correct for that, and it introduces abberations that can't be corrected) so we still need space telescopes for some things. This is why the Webb telescope, widely touted as Hubble's replacement, has to be in space; it's an IR scope and IR gets washed out by the atmospheric glare. But that also means it's not really a replacement for Hubble; it's meant to do different things entirely.

[phantom power]

3. I've been wondering for a while if adaptive optics will be a "hubble killer"

[krispos42]

4. Holy shit

That's a hundred feet across!


The 200-incher in Palomar is less than 17 feet. This TMT will have 35 times the area!

Wow...


Damn, if only we could get this one into space!

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. The image is excellently photoshopped on where it will sit.

The volcano to the left I think is either Hualalai or Kohala
its been so long since I visited that site.

[Occulus]

10. I think that's a 3D model using HDR lighting, actually

See how beautifully the sky is reflected from the dome? They were using a light probe, probably taken on the site. Then they used the resulting image to create lighting in the final render; each pixel in the light probe emits light into the scene with the color of its location in the light probe. The end result is, as you can see, very realistic, and in fact with some images created using this technique- it depends on the artists' mad modeling and texturing skillz- it's impossible to tell the difference between a faked piece of architecture and a real one.

[joshcryer]

11. This scope, or one of the other ultra large scopes, I believe, *will find evidence of life*.

They will be epically good at spectroscopy. And once Kepler does its job finding all of the nearby planets, the ultra large telescopes will be able to peer into their atmospheres.

Evidence of life elsewhere in the universe, I wager, is within 20 years.

[Fumesucker]

13. Kepler will only find planets that transit their sun's disk from our vantage point.

For Earth sized planets in the habitable zone of suitable stars that's only going to be a very small percentage of the total number of such planets within reach of the Kepler satellite.

Think how seldom Venus or Mercury transit Sol.

Mercury far more often than Venus and even it only transits every thirteen or fourteen years, Venus transits are more like one per century.

[joshcryer]

14. Very true, I should have said "many" nearby planets, not all! Kepler *should* find an Earth-like...

...planet, though. One in the habitable zone and a rocky Earth-mass.

[Fumesucker]

16. Personally I think the number of Earth like worlds is going to be very low..

If by Earth like you mean having life.

Venus is remarkably like Earth in many ways and yet very much unlike Earth in that it has no plate tectonics and has ridiculously lethal surface conditions for anything we currently would recognize as life.

[joshcryer]

15. Note: Venus and Mercury transit Sol rarely from our vantage point. They do it yearly from another...

...vantage point!

According to Wikipedia the chances of an Earth-like transit are 1 in 215. That's not too bad.

[Fumesucker]

18. But Mercury, Venus and Earth all orbit in the plane of the ecliptic..

Which increases the odds considerably that they will transit Sol from our vantage point.

That is the point I was trying to make, our perspective is a rather advantageous one from which to see Venus and Mercury transit Sol and yet we see few such transits.

[Ichingcarpenter]

17. China Joins Thirty Meter Telescope Project

(PhysOrg.com) -- The National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has joined the Thirty Meter Telescope Project (TMT). As an Observer, China will participate in planning the development of what will be the world's most advanced and capable astronomical observatory.


The TMT project has completed its $77 million design development phase with primary financial support of $50 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and $22 million from Canada. The project has now entered the early construction phase thanks to an additional $200 million pledge from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Caltech and the University of California have agreed to raise matching funds of $50 million to bring the construction total to $300 million, and the Canadian partners propose to supply the enclosure, the telescope structure, and the first light adaptive optics.

The TMT project is an international partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy. The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) joined TMT as a Collaborating Institution in 2008.

http://www.physorg.com/news177701830.html