![]() Here we’re going to look at 24 facts about the gateway to the stars. The telescope, a device loved by so many people from professional astronomers to back-yard stargazers, has been around for centuries.īut how much do you actually know about telescopes? It’s this last step that will enable the telescope to possibly capture glimpses of alien worlds, in wavelengths of light that our puny, human eyes can recognize.Have you ever looked up and wondered what that shimmering ball of light in the sky actually is, or how it looks? The mirror then undergoes two years of polishing, yielding a surface so smooth that if it were expanded to the size of North America, the tallest imperfection would be half as tall as a golf tee.įinally, a 100-nanometer-thick coat of aluminum - excellent for reflecting visible light - is applied to the clear glass surface. ![]() The 80-percent-hollow structure is light enough to float on oil, but stiff enough to resist bending in the wind. After three more months of cooling and annealing, the glass mirror resembles two pancakes sandwiching a honeycomb. Starting with a glass-loaded furnace, it takes about a week to bring the enclosed material to peak temperature, causing it to melt and flow into a mold comprised of hexagonal columns. Casting the Giant Magellan Telescope’s primary mirrors - each nearly 8.5 meters wide - has been ongoing for roughly 18 years. It took about eight years to fabricate JWST’s segmented, 6.5-meter-wide mirror. In the meantime, the marathon that is the casting of the mirrors continues. But according to a spokesperson from the consortium constructing the telescope, no decisions have yet been made to change the telescope’s name. ![]() Some astronomers have called for renaming the galaxies known as the Magellanic Clouds, due partly to the explorer’s brutal actions toward Indigenous people ( SN: 9/26/23). The telescope’s name originates with Ferdinand Magellan, leader of the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe. This new telescope, however, will be able to directly measure a smaller planet’s atmosphere, without relying on a starlight backdrop, and detect much more of what floats within. And sometimes, researchers may even be able to detect certain molecules in a large exoplanet’s atmosphere when it passes in front of its star. “It’s going to give us the opportunity to find potentially habitable planets,” says astrobiologist Antígona Segura of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City.Ĭurrent instruments may be able to measure a particular exoplanet’s mass, says Segura, who isn’t involved with the telescope’s construction. That’s light that could potentially carry signatures of alien life. This shiny expanse will provide the new telescope with an image resolution at least four times that of today’s most advanced space telescopes.Īnd unlike the James Webb Space Telescope, best suited for measuring infrared light emitted by hot celestial bodies, the Giant Magellan Telescope will excel at capturing optical and near-infrared wavelengths of light emitted by cooler, Earthlike worlds ( SN: 8/20/23 SN: 3/27/23). ![]() Together, the mirrors will function as a single unit, about as wide as an adult blue whale is long, that reflects light into the telescope’s secondary mirrors and, ultimately, its scientific instruments. “We’ve got six petals, and one in the middle.” There, within a yet-to-be-built, 22-story enclosure, the seven primary mirrors will be united in a flowerlike formation, Januzzi explains. Slated to start operating in the late 2020s, the telescope, developed by an international consortium of research institutions, will repose on a mountaintop in Chile’s Atacama Desert, beneath some of the clearest night skies on Earth. The mirror is the last of seven needed to capture light for what will be the world’s most powerful optical instrument, the Giant Magellan Telescope. ![]() If all goes to plan, the molten material will anneal to form the body of an enormous mirror - one as tall as a two-story house, if stood on edge. In the heart of that inferno, nearly 17,500 kilograms of borosilicate glass - roughly four semitruck loads - had melted into a crystal clear fluid. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |