Bilbao (Spain), June 19 (EFE).- The dome of the so-called Giant Magellan Telescope, destined to be one of the largest astronomical facilities in the world, passed the final design review stage, in which Spanish engineering takes part Idom, and it was ready to be built in Chile.
As reported this Wednesday in a joint note by the Giant Magallanes Telescope (GMT) project and Idom, the approval of the design “marks an important milestone for this project, whose construction presents a degree of progress of 40%, with a view to starting operations at early 2030s.”
The dome was ready for construction after a team of ten international experts validated “two years of design work” by Idom and the Giant Magellan Telescope.
With this phase concluded, the international consortium that promotes the project, led by the United States and made up of fourteen universities and research institutions, is preparing for an international search process in order to choose the company that will be in charge of the construction of the dome.
According to Bruce Bigelow, manager of infrastructure, dome and facilities at the GMT, the design of the dome “constitutes a true feat in terms of technical management and engineering.”
The 65-meter-high dome will be one of the largest mechanized buildings ever built and will represent “a true feat of modern engineering and precision manufacturing,” according to its officials.
The infrastructure will weigh more than 5,000 metric tons, will be able to complete a rotation in 4 minutes and will have 46-meter-high windows that will open to provide the 25.4-meter telescope with a clear view of the universe.
Idom began designing the dome more than two years ago. According to Idom’s North American president, Tom Lorentz, “our team took on the challenge of designing the telescope dome knowing that this structure would contribute to some of the most important scientific discoveries of our generation.”
The promoters of the project explained that the construction of the telescope components that will be housed inside the dome “is advancing in great strides.”
As specified, last year the manufacturing of the seventh and last primary mirror began in Arizona, while the telescope’s first adaptive secondary mirror is almost ready.
Additionally, significant progress was made on a suite of high-resolution cameras and spectrographs in Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and Texas.
Thanks to these optical technologies, the Giant Magellan Telescope will have a resolution 10 times greater than that of the Hubble Space Telescope and an observation power up to 200 times greater than that of the best existing ground-based telescopes.
All of this will offer the scientific community an unprecedented view of the evolution of the universe and the origins of chemical elements. EFE
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