The Canberra Times has a bit on ANU collecting $88 million of Federale money to join in the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) project.
While the telescope is being built in Chile’s high altitude Atacama Desert our own Mount Stromlo will be getting $23.4 million in upgrades for the building of telescope bits.
UPDATED: The ANU’s now got a media release out on this. It includes more detail on the GMT:
- The GMT, expected to be the largest optical telescope on Earth, will detect and study planets around other suns, probe the dark matter and dark energy that controls the expansion and development of the cosmos, and unlock the secrets of star and planet formation.
The GMT project has been led in Australia by The Australian National University, which was a founding member of the project and has been active though the design and development phase. The project is an international collaboration that counts amongst its participants the Carnegie Institution for Science, Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Chicago, Texas A&M University, the University of Arizona and the University of Texas from Austin, and the Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute.
Manufacturing the components here in Canberra could hopefully set us up for a lot of other exciting work.
Loading ...
