World's Largest "Eye on the Universe" Is Coming up With Hawaii, Offering Better Views of the Cosmos

The 30-meter telescope (TMT) will be the world's largest "eye on the universe" ever to be constructed by an international team of scientists at a cost of over $2.6 billion.

Newsroom Odisha reports that scientists, engineers, and industries from India, the US, Japan, Canada, and China are making the most gigantic telescope ever that will be placed at its proposed site in Maunakea, Hawaii.

(Photo : MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Visitors look at a scale down model of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on display during 'Vigyan Samagam', a multi-venue mega-science exhibition, at the Visveswaraya Industrial and Technological Museum in Bangalore on July 29, 2019.

TMT Joins Team of Space Telescopes That Will Observe the Universe

The two biggest telescopes today are the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope measuring about 2.5 meters and 6.5 meters, respectively. The gigantic size of the upcoming "eye on the universe," which is five times bigger, makes the two existing space telescopes far smaller

The ground-based telescope is said to give scientists a better view of the planets, stars, galaxies, exoplanets, nebulae, supernovae, and pulsars in unthinkable far-off regions of the seemingly endless universe. It will help scientists to study the atmosphere of other cosmic objects and find out if life exists or can thrive there to test out the current varied hypotheses on extraterrestrial life.

Prasanna Deshmukh, the work package manager for TMT's primary mirror control system, told The Tribune India that the TMT will enable humans to peek from one light-year in the Solar System to the early universe or around 13.7 billion light-years away.

The current generation of telescopes works in optical ultraviolet, and infrared wavelengths, but it is still not enough to view many things in the universe because of their limited size and resolution. That is where TMT will come to provide a better understanding of the process and mechanisms of the mysterious universe.

Deshmukh said that TMT's primary mirror will comprise 492 hexagon mirrors with 1,476 actuators, 2,772 high-precision edge sensors, and 10,332 smaller actuators that will detect even the micro-minutest deviations to get clear images from far-off distances in the universe. TMT is scheduled to "open its eye" to observe the universe by 2032 instead of the original deadline of 2028.

TMT: Astronomy's Next-Gen Observatory

The Thirty Meter Telescope is one of a new class of extremely large telescopes that will help scientists see deeper into the universe and observe cosmic objects at unprecedented detail using its 30-meter diameter prime mirror that enables observations from UV to mid-infrared wavelengths with up to 80 times the sensitivity of today's telescopes.

It is set to deliver images at an infrared wavelength that is 12 times sharper than images from the Hubble Space Telescope and four times sharper than the James Webb Space Telescope.

The Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory (TIO) selected the site in Maunakea, Hawaii in 2009 as the preferred site to build and operate the telescope after five years of a rigorous campaign around the world.

The TMT is being designed by TIO, a non-profit international partnership among different institutes, universities, and agencies from different countries across the globe. It will serve as a unique tool in probing many outstanding open questions about the universe.