spacetoday.net: Hawaii selected for Thirty Meter Telescope

Posted: Fri, Jul 24, 2009, 1:57 PM ET (1757 GMT)
Thirty Meter Telescope illustration (TMT)

An international consortium selected Hawaii's Mauna Kea this week as the future site of what will be the world's largest telescope. The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Corporation, a joint effort of US and Canadian universities, selected the Hawaiian mountain over a Chilean site as the location where the giant telescope will be built. With a diameter of 30 meters, the TMT will have nine times the collecting area of the largest telescopes in operation today, allowing astronomers to observe fainter and more distant objects. The telescope's main mirror will consist of 492 segments aligned to operate as a single mirror in much the same fashion as the twin 10-meter Keck telescopes, also on Mauna Kea. The TMT is scheduled for completion in 2018.