![]() In the end, Mauna Kea, actually the summit of a dormant volcano that rises 9,750 meters off the ocean floor-the highest island mountain in the world-edged out Cerro Armazones for several reasons, astronomers with TMT said. They also pored over satellite images.īy last year, two finalists had emerged-in opposite hemispheres: Mauna Kea and Cerro Armazones. The researchers installed weather stations and a suite of other instruments at each site to measure the transparency of the atmosphere, turbulence, dust and other factors. Site evaluations for the TMT began in 2001 with a team of scientists trekking to some of the most remote places on Earth. The Giant Magellan Telescope, with its seven 8.4-meter mirrors, will be built at Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama and see first light by 2018. ![]() The remote Atacama is home to the European Southern Observatory. The scope, projected to cost about $754 million in 2006 dollars, is expected to be operational by 2018. Several sites, including Cerro Armazones, Cerro Tolar and Cerro Tolonchar in Chile's Atacama Desert, and San Pedro Martir in Baja California, Mexico, had been considered for the TMT, a project of Caltech, the University of California, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy. The light captured in its mirror had traveled for more than 13 billion years, nearly since the birth of the universe. Last April, the Gemini Observatory there released a photograph of the oldest object ever seen-a gamma-ray burst measured at a redshift of 8.2. Mauna Kea's telescopes have advanced studies of galactic evolution, the formation of stars and planets, and our own solar system. Keck's twin 10-meter telescopes, operated by the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, and Japan's 8.2-meter Subaru telescope. Many of the world's principal observatories on the planet are situated atop Mauna Kea-and above 40 percent of Earth's atmosphere-including the W. "After taking a short walk for a minute, nearly everyone feels dizzy," he says. Geoff Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, says the thin atmosphere takes its toll: Although the stars are spectacular, it's actually hard to focus on them at Mauna Kea's altitude. ![]() At 4,205 meters above the Pacific Ocean, the summit of Mauna Kea commands a stunning view of the world below-and the universe above. The oxygen thins, the temperature drops to freezing, and the sky deepens to dark blue. ![]() On a trip to the observatory sites, visitors quickly leave the lush tropics and enter a stark environment that NASA's Mars rovers might recognize. "When you go outside at night and look up, it is like looking through a window straight into the heart of the universe." "The nighttime sky at Mauna Kea is simply spectacular," says Michael Bolte, director of University of California Observatories and a member of the board that chose this summit as the site for the TMT. And it is no mystery why it is home to one of the world's largest collections of observatories, with 13 operated by scientists from 11 countries. It's no surprise for scientists that the summit of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on Hawaii's Big Island, was the choice for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), one of a handful of next-generation optical telescopes that aims to propel ground-based astronomy in the 21st century.įor professional astronomers, rarified air and dizzy spells are a small price to pay for Mauna Kea's front-row seat on the cosmos.
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