8/16/2023 0 Comments Thirty meter telescope observatory![]() The analysis includes plans to mitigate the impact.Ī previous version of this story incorrectly said that the wekiu bug was a former endangered species. The organization’s environmental impact statement acknowledges that the TMT’s construction will disturb some habitat of the wekiu bug, formerly a candidate for the endangered species list. The project construction won’t involve dynamite. Gordon Squires, vice president for external relations for the TMT International Observatory, says the project site is less visible than the mountain peak would be and isn’t home to any endangered species. The TIO created this rendering after hearing rumors that the TMT would be comparable in size to Aloha Stadium. This rendering of the Thirty Meter Telescope shows that the observatory is smaller than Aloha Stadium. The building itself will be 180 feet high and 14 feet below ground level. The entire project area is expected to take up 5 acres, including the telescope dome, support building and parking lot. The TMT is going to be built on a new site, not on top of decommissioned telescopes. ![]() The mountain facilities also have a history of chemical and waste spills that include up to 1,000 gallons of sewage overflowing in 2008.īut the university has improved its management of the mountain over the past two decades and the TMT International Observatory, the nonprofit organization behind the TMT, says this project will be a zero-waste facility with minimal impact on the mountain.Ĭivil Beat examined some of the key environmental questions about the project:Ĭivil Beat recently received this question from a reader: “How much more land is intended to be used for the new telescope or are they removing one or two of the old telescopes and using the same pads for the new one? I’ve been told they are taking thousands of more acres? Is this true?” A 1998 state audit found that observatories left trash and old equipment and damaged historical sites and endangered species candidate habitat. It doesn’t help that the University of Hawaii has a poor history of managing the mountain. Other facts are more nuanced or complex than they initially appear. Some of the environmental claims raised on social media, like rumors about the TMT being fueled by nuclear power, are false. An artist’s rendering of the Thirty Meter Telescope shows the observatory in the bottom left of the frame. But many opponents also have concerns about the environmental impact of what would be the world’s largest visible-light telescope. Some who consider the mountain sacred believe adding another structure to be desecration, no matter what that structure is. Hundreds of activists remain at the base of Mauna Kea Access Road and plan to stay to prevent construction trucks from heading up the mountain. ![]() This work was also supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.Emotions have been running high about the plan to build another telescope on Mauna Kea, a mountain on the Big Island that’s already home to a thriving astronomy industry. *The TMT collaborating institutions are the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the National Astronomical Observatories of China and their consortium partners, the Department of Science and Technology of India and their supported institutes, and the National Research Council of Canada. It may even detect the effects of life on the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets. The two-telescope US-ELT will address questions in fundamental physics concerning dark matter and dark energy, test general relativity in unprecedented ways, trace the formation of black holes in a wide range of astrophysical seetings, provide rapid all-sky response to gravitational wave detections, trace the development of large-scale structure in the universe, elucidate the history of chemical enrichment of the universe and explore aspects of star and planet formation that are not accessible in any other way. ![]() National Academy's ASTRO 2020 Decadal Review that placed extremely large telescopes as the top priority for NSF funding in the coming decade, preferably as part of a two-hemisphere system with the TMT in the northern hemisphere and the Giant Magellan Telescope in the south. This breakthrough combination of sensitivity and resolution created a compelling case for the U.S. State-of-the-art adaptive optics systems will compensate for the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere, and deliver images at infrared wavelengths that are more than 12 times sharper than those of the famed Hubble Space Telescope, and four times sharper than JWST. Its 30m diameter primary mirror will enable observations from ultraviolet to mid-infrared wavelengths with up to 80 times the sensitivity of today's largest telescopes. The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is an extremely large telescope that will observe the universe with unprecedented sensitivity and detail. ![]()
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