Optics for the Giant Magellan Telescope

osa-opn.org July/August 2009 | Astronomers will soon be using the 25-m Giant Magellan Telescope to probe the universe with a sensitivity and resolution that go far beyond anything that can be achieved today.  In August 2006, the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab cast a 3.75-m mirror under the stands of the University of Arizona football stadium. Twenty years earlier, this mirror could have become the primary mirror for the sixth largest optical telescope in the world. Today, it’s a piece of the test optic system that is guiding the manufacture of the 25-m primary mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT).  more>