Giant Magellan Telescope: New Mega-Telescope in Chilean Andes

Artist's impression of the Giant Magellan Telescope's mirror system.

Credit: Giant Magellan Telescope /GMTO Corporation

A gigantic telescope designed to help astronomers solve some of the universe's deepest mysteries will soon start taking shape atop an arid mountain in the Chilean Andes.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) completed several major external reviews earlier this year and is on target to enter the construction phase before the end of 2014, project representatives said.

If all goes according to plan, the megascope should begin observing the heavens early in the next decade.

"The group here on the project is basically anticipating that we will begin construction activities late this year," GMT director Patrick McCarthy, Carnegie Observatories, told reporters.

"We're going ahead full steam, aiming for that 2021 first light when the first few mirrors get up on the mountain, along with all the rest of the hardware."

Scientists will use the enormous telescope to probe the nature of mysterious dark energy and dark matter, find and characterise exoplanets and study how the universe's first stars and galaxies came together, GMT representatives have said.



The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be built on Chile's Las Campanas Peak, at an altitude of about 8,500 feet (2,550 meters). The site was leveled by an excavation blast in March 2012.

GMT will arrange seven 27.6-foot-wide (8.4 m) primary mirrors, the biggest single-piece astronomical mirrors ever made, into one light-collecting surface 80 feet (24 m) across.

The completed scope will have 10 times the resolving power of NASA's iconic Hubble Space Telescope, project representatives say.

The third primary mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is cast in a spinning furnace at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory Mirror Lab on Aug. 23, 2013.

Credit: Mike Wall/Space.com

The GMT design also incorporates seven smaller secondary mirrors, which will change shape to counter the blurring effects of Earth's thick atmosphere.

Each of GMT's 20-ton primary mirrors must be shaped and smoothed to near perfection. Their surfaces cannot be off by more than 20 nanometers, about the width of a single glass molecule.

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that six of the mirrors must be steeply curved, since they surround a central (symmetric) mirror.

Manufacturing and polishing the primary mirrors, activities that are done at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, have proved to be enormously challenging, McCarthy said.

But one of the big mirrors is finished, while two others have already been cast. Casting of the fourth one is scheduled for next March.

"So we've dealt with that as our principal technical risk, and we've retired that," McCarthy said.



Fundraising is another challenge. The project's total cost is pegged at $860 million, though perhaps another $100 million will eventually be needed to cover contingencies and the cost of inflation, McCarthy said.

The money will be provided by GMT's many partners, which include educational institutions such as the University of Arizona, Harvard and the University of Chicago, private organizations like the Carnegie Institution for Science and international entities, such as the state of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Money is now coming in "at a rate that makes us pretty confident that we'll manage to raise enough funds to keep the project on schedule, and that the schedule will be set by the engineering rather than by how fast we can raise money," McCarthy said.

NASA UAVSAR: An airborne research team focuses on Andean volcanoes

This false-colour image of Peru's Ubinas volcano was acquired on April 14, 2014, by NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR). 

Located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the city of Arequipa, Ubinas is Peru's most active volcano. 

UAVSAR flew exactly the same flight path over Ubinas in 2013. 

By combining the images from the two years, researchers will produce detailed maps of surface motions that can improve models of volcanic deformation. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A NASA-developed airborne imager called a synthetic aperture radar took a detailed look at volcanoes in Central and South America during an Earth science study in late April and early May 2014.

The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was flown on NASA's C-20A.

The 29-day deployment ended May 6 when the aircraft returned to its base in Palmdale, California, after 19 flights totaling 97 hours in the air.

This is the second consecutive year the UAVSAR team has conducted a campaign to study sites in Central and South America.

Many of the flights imaged the Andean volcanic belt located in western South America.

"By combining images acquired in 2013 with the 2014 images, researchers will produce detailed surface motion measurements to improve volcanic deformation models," said Naiara Pinto, JPL's UAVSAR science coordinator.

NASA's C-20A features a high-precision autopilot designed and developed by engineers at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center, Edwards, California, allowing the aircraft to fly the same flight lines this spring as those flown in 2013 within 15 feet (4.5 meters) or closer.

With the autopilot engaged, the synthetic aperture radar is able to acquire repeat-pass data that can measure land-surface changes within fractions of an inch (centimeters).

NASA's C-20A aircraft crew preparing for flight from Tocumen International Airport in Panama City, Panama. 

The aircraft was deployed to Central and South America for a research study using JPL's UAVSAR airborne radar, located in an underbelly pod (note red cover). 

Credit: NASA/Armstrong Flight Research Center

In coordination with the volcano studies, the agency's C-20A gathered data over Amazonian forests in Peru, agricultural sites in Chile and glaciers on the Chilean/Argentinian border.

All of these research projects involve Latin American institutions, including universities and hazard monitoring agencies.

Cordón Caulle: Volcanic Eruptions amidst a Lightning Storm - Francisco Negroni

In March 2012, Francisco Negroni visited Cordón Caulle in Puyehue National Park in the Andes of Ranco Province, Chile with his camera equipment.

He left the site with these crazy photos of the active volcano erupting while a lightning storm took place. 

These pictures are so remarkable and dramatic, we’re not sure if we would have loved to be right there at that time.

NASA ISS Image: Laguna Verde lake in the Andes Argentina

Laguna Verde lake in the Andean mountains of north-western Argentina

This lake is situated 4,095 metres above sea level. 

Parts of the lake are coloured green due to the presence of microscopic organisms.

Credit: Nasa

Laguna del Maule Volcano: Ground under ancient Chilean volcano is rising fast

Laguna del Maule in the Chilean Andes Mountains. Researchers have found uplift in part of the volcanic field.

Credit: Sarah Strierch / Wikimedia Commons

The Laguna del Maule volcanic field in the Chilean Andes Mountains lies in the heart of volcano country.

The region is a well-known subduction zone, where the friction of one crustal plate sliding under another heats rock to form magma.

But for the last 2,000 years, Laguna del Maule has been a quiet water-filled caldera.

Now, scientists are recording rapid deformation of the land around the caldera, suggesting that a magma reservoir is inflating below the surface.

Helene Le Mével of the University of Wisconsin – Madison, GeoScience dept, presented a poster at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco Wednesday to share the findings.

Researchers at the Southern Andean Volcano Observatory (OVDAS) monitor and archive volcanic activity throughout the region, but Le Mével said that until now, the observatory had no reason to focus on the Laguna del Maule field. “It’s such an old caldera that there’s nobody there,” she said.

Using a radar technique to measure changes in the level of the ground, Le Mével and her colleagues observed that several areas around and under the lake were rising.

When they set up three GPS stations to confirm this data, the results were startling: The ground is uplifting at a rate of almost 30 centimeters per year, and is now 1.4 meters higher than it was in 2007.

Using this information, the team found that the area is organized as a ring fault – a circular pattern of vents formed as land collapsed inward during the eruptions that created the volcano’s cauldron-like shape.

The area is of particular concern, Le Mével said, because the rock in this region contains a high concentration of silicon dioxide, the tough crystalline material used to make glass.

Unlike magma consisting mostly of basalt, found in the more “flowy” volcanoes of Hawaii, silicic magma very thick. It tends to build up in gluey domes under the surface, and then push upward in a violent explosion.

The scientists estimate that the horizontal reservoir of magma, called a sill, measures 7.5 by 5.5 km, and sits about 5 km underground. Not only is the sill growing, pushing up the earth above it, but its growth is also accelerating.

“At some point, a magma reservoir is always going to erupt when it’s ready, we just don’t know when,” said Le Mével.

She expects to see increasing seismicity right before the eruption, which she said could still be 1,000 years away. But she hopes this new evidence will be enough to fuel further research on the processes driving the deformation.

“We rarely observe large silicic systems that are likely to erupt, even if it’s not next week or next year. And so it’s going to be exciting to follow it. To see how it continues.”