The fabrication of the sixth mirror of the Giant Magellan Telescope has just begun according to the announcement released by the University of Texas at Austin. This will be part of one of seven of the world's largest monolithic mirrors that will allow astronomers to see farther into the universe in more detail.
According to Taft Armandoff, the Director of the university's McDonald Observatory and Vice-Chair of the GMT Organization's Board of Directors, the mirror casting will bring the university's faculty, students, and the researchers one step closer to the completion of the telescope.
Marvel of Modern Engineering
The Giant Magellan Telescope's sixth mirror measures two stories high when standing on edge or about 27.5 feet (8.4 meters).
It is being fabricated at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona, which will take approximately four years to complete.
According to Phys.org, the casting of the sixth mirror is considered a marvel of modern engineering. This is usually celebrated by a large in-person event attended by many people all over the world. But with the ongoing pandemic, the construction of the sixth mirror is kept behind closed doors to protect the health of the ten people casting the mirror.
James Fanson, the Giant Magellan Telescope's Project Manager, pointed out that the most important part of a telescope is the light-collecting mirror. The larger it is, the better that astronomers could see into the universe in more detail.
He further said that the unique primary mirror design of the telescope consists of seven of the largest mirrors in the world and casting the sixth mirror is one step towards completion.
Ten Times Viewing Power Than Hubble Telescope
The Giant Magellan Telescope will have a light-collecting area of 3,961 square feet (368 meters) once it becomes operational, which allows people to see the torch engraved on a dime from almost 100 miles away, according to EurekAlert.
Moreover, the report said that the telescope also offers the widest field of view of any Extremely Large Telescope in the 30-meter (98-foot) class.
Additionally, the Giant Magellan Telescope also reportedly has ten times the viewing power of the famed Hubble Space Telescope and four times greater than the highly anticipated James Webb Space Telescope, which will be launched this year.
How Will the Sixth Mirror Be Fabricated?
The casting of the giant mirror of the Giant Magellan Telescope involves the melting of almost 20 tons (38,490 pounds) of E6 glass, described as high-purity and low-expansion borosilicate glass, into a spinning furnace specifically designed to cast giant mirrors for the telescopes.
Phys.org reported that the furnace spins at five revolutions per minute at the peak of the melting process to heat the glass at 1,165 degrees Celsius (2,129 F) for five hours to liquefy it into the mold.
Then it enters one month of annealing process where it is called while the furnace spins at a slower rate to toughen the glass by removing internal stresses. It would take another one and half months to cool at room temperature.
The polishing of the mirror would take about two years after the cooling process before it has an optical surface of less than one-thousandth of the width of the human's hair or five times smaller than a coronavirus.
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