Paper
17 September 2012 Giant Magellan Telescope: overview
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Abstract
The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is a 25-meter optical/infrared extremely large telescope that is being built by an international consortium of universities and research institutions. It will be located at the Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. The GMT primary mirror consists of seven 8.4-m borosilicate honeycomb mirror segments made at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab (SOML). Six identical off-axis segments and one on-axis segment are arranged on a single nearly-paraboloidal parent surface having an overall focal ratio of f/0.7. The fabrication, testing and verification procedures required to produce the closely-matched off-axis mirror segments were developed during the production of the first mirror. Production of the second and third off-axis segments is underway. GMT incorporates a seven-segment Gregorian adaptive secondary to implement three modes of adaptive-optics operation: natural-guide star AO, laser-tomography AO, and ground-layer AO. A wide-field corrector/ADC is available for use in seeing-limited mode over a 20-arcmin diameter field of view. Up to seven instruments can be mounted simultaneously on the telescope in a large Gregorian Instrument Rotator. Conceptual design studies were completed for six AO and seeing-limited instruments, plus a multi-object fiber feed, and a roadmap for phased deployment of the GMT instrument suite is being developed. The partner institutions have made firm commitments for approximately 45% of the funds required to build the telescope. Project Office efforts are currently focused on advancing the telescope and enclosure design in preparation for subsystem- and system-level preliminary design reviews which are scheduled to be completed in the first half of 2013.
© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Matt Johns, Patrick McCarthy, Keith Raybould, Antonin Bouchez, Arash Farahani, Jose Filgueira, George Jacoby, Steve Shectman, and Michael Sheehan "Giant Magellan Telescope: overview", Proc. SPIE 8444, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes IV, 84441H (17 September 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.926716
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KEYWORDS
Telescopes

Adaptive optics

Mirrors

Observatories

Space telescopes

Stars

Optical instrument design

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