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04 Sep 2024
Megastructure to be assembled over the next six years at purpose-built Ingersoll facility.
Work has now begun on what is believed to be the largest telescope mount ever built in the US, with Ingersoll Machine Tools scheduled to complete the 39-meter-tall precision moving structure by the end of the decade.
The giant mount will ultimately be shipped to Chile and then reassembled, where it will support the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and its 25.4 meter diameter primary mirror made up of seven petal-shaped primary mirror components.
According to the consortium responsible for the GMT project, the latest milestone means that the project is now 40 per cent under construction, and on track to be operational at the summit of Las Campanas Peak in the Atacama Desert by the early 2030s.
Frictionless gliding
Equivalent to 12 stories tall and weighing 2100 metric tons, the GMT mount is based on an altitude-azimuth design, providing support for the seven primary mirror segments - each more than 8 meters in diameter - as well as adaptive optics and scientific instruments.
The steel superstructure will sit on a concrete pier measuring 22 meters in diameter and glide on a thin film of oil, meaning that it will be able to resist image quality interruptions from even the slightest vibration.
“While massive, this precision tool is designed to glide frictionlessly in three degrees of freedom so that the 18 metric-ton primary mirrors have undisturbed access to study the night sky,” explains the GMT consortium.
Ingersoll will build the mount at its facility in Rockford, Illinois, where a recent expansion has included installation of the largest gantry mill in the US in order to complete the project.
Jeffrey Kimberly, the firm’s COO, said: “We are proud to be a part of developing and building the mount structure for the Giant Magellan Telescope. Ingersoll’s rich history of building very large, complex, and very accurate machine tools complements the unique design of the telescope and the impressive engineering capability of our partner company OHB in Germany.
“The collective expertise of this entire team is what makes it possible to build this impressive scientific wonder that will lead to new discoveries that are beyond our imagination with today’s current capabilities.”
Exoplanet biosignatures
One of the new generation of “extremely large telescopes” currently under construction, GMT will be 200 times more powerful than today’s best telescopes. That optical power results from a combination of the enormous primary mirror array and its efficient optical design.
According to the consortium, that design is unique among its peers, and will be able to deliver the highest-performing combination of image quality, field of view, and light sensitivity ever achieved.
Once built, astronomers using the high-fidelity adaptive mirrors expect to be able to probe the universe in far more detail than has previously been possible, for example a resolution ten times better than that of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Among the GMT’s primary scientific goals is to detect faint biosignatures from distant exoplanets - something that would indicate the likely presence of life throughout the universe.
The project has suffered delays setting back "first light" by around a decade, although several of the primary mirror segments have already been cast at the world-leading Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab, part of the University of Arizona.
Robert Shelton, GMT president, said in a release from the consortium: “Our cost-effective design enables us to build the Giant Magellan Telescope faster and with less risk, all while achieving the broadest range of scientific capabilities.
“Ingersoll’s global experience in manufacturing giant precision structures has been instrumental on our way to becoming one of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world.”
• Meanwhile up in space, the much smaller-scale "Deep Purple" telescope is said by its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory team to now be operational.
The 6U CubeSat-scale instrument, which offers a rare combination of ultraviolet and short-wave infrared (SWIR) imaging, features a novel, compact optical system and electronics package inside a lightweight, modular housing.
Launched August 16, the payload was designed and delivered in less than 12 months and at a cost of less than $1 million. It has now achieved "first light", with all systems working as expected and an observation campaign already under way.
“Our observation campaign will begin the week of September 2 and we will survey the Earth background, the galactic bulge, and other satellites in orbit,” said principal investigator Jordan Smilo.
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