This article needs to be updated.(August 2021) |
Location(s) | People's Republic of China |
---|---|
Organization | China National Space Administration |
Telescope style | optical telescope proposed building or structure |
Diameter | 30 m (98 ft 5 in) |
The Chinese Future Giant Telescope is a proposed optical telescope with a primary mirror that has a 30-meter diameter. [1]
The Chinese Future Giant Telescope has a primary focal ratio of 1.2. Its primary mirror is segmented with 1020 annular submirrors arranged in 17 concentric annuli. Each segment has average length and width both of 0.8 m. Apart from a conventional Cassegrain focus, four Nasmyth foci on two double-deck platforms on both sides are also present. There is a Coudé focus provided for there interferometric array. The comparatively small secondary mirror is 2.74 m in diameter, which will serve active corrections. [1] Other characteristics include:
A primary mirror is the principal light-gathering surface of a reflecting telescope.
The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is a telescope facility operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It consists of four individual telescopes, each with a primary mirror 8.2 m across, which are generally used separately but can be used together to achieve very high angular resolution. The four separate optical telescopes are known as Antu, Kueyen, Melipal, and Yepun, which are all words for astronomical objects in the Mapuche language. The telescopes form an array complemented by four movable Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) of 1.8 m aperture.
The Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) was a conceptual design by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) organization for an extremely large telescope, which was intended to have a single aperture of 100 meters in diameter. Because of the complexity and cost of building a telescope of this unprecedented size, ESO has elected to focus on the 39-meter diameter Extremely Large Telescope instead.
Adaptive optics (AO) is a technology used to improve the performance of optical systems by reducing the effect of incoming wavefront distortions by deforming a mirror in order to compensate for the distortion. It is used in astronomical telescopes and laser communication systems to remove the effects of atmospheric distortion, in microscopy, optical fabrication and in retinal imaging systems to reduce optical aberrations. Adaptive optics works by measuring the distortions in a wavefront and compensating for them with a device that corrects those errors such as a deformable mirror or a liquid crystal array.
An optical telescope is a telescope that gathers and focuses light mainly from the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, to create a magnified image for direct visual inspection, to make a photograph, or to collect data through electronic image sensors.
A reflecting telescope is a telescope that uses a single or a combination of curved mirrors that reflect light and form an image. The reflecting telescope was invented in the 17th century by Isaac Newton as an alternative to the refracting telescope which, at that time, was a design that suffered from severe chromatic aberration. Although reflecting telescopes produce other types of optical aberrations, it is a design that allows for very large diameter objectives. Almost all of the major telescopes used in astronomy research are reflectors. Reflecting telescopes come in many design variations and may employ extra optical elements to improve image quality or place the image in a mechanically advantageous position. Since reflecting telescopes use mirrors, the design is sometimes referred to as a catoptric telescope.
The Gran Telescopio Canarias is a 10.4 m (410 in) reflecting telescope located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma, in the Canaries, Spain. It is the world's largest single-aperture optical telescope.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed primarily to conduct infrared astronomy. The most powerful telescope ever launched into space, its greatly improved infrared resolution and sensitivity will allow it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. This is expected to enable a broad range of investigations across the fields of astronomy and cosmology, such as observations of first stars and the formation of the first galaxies, and detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets. JWST was launched in December 2021 on a European Space Agency (ESA) Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, and entered orbit in January 2022; as of June 2022, the telescope is undergoing instrument modes check out. Once operational, expected about the end of June 2022, JWST is intended to succeed the Hubble as NASA's flagship mission in astrophysics. NASA has scheduled the first official science images release event for Tuesday, 12 July 2022 at 10:30 am EDT/usa.
The Newtonian telescope, also called the Newtonian reflector or just the Newtonian, is a type of reflecting telescope invented by the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), using a concave primary mirror and a flat diagonal secondary mirror. Newton's first reflecting telescope was completed in 1668 and is the earliest known functional reflecting telescope. The Newtonian telescope's simple design has made it very popular with amateur telescope makers.
The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a 10-metre class optical telescope designed mainly for spectroscopy. It consists of 91 hexagonal mirror segments each with a 1-metre inscribed diameter, resulting in a total hexagonal mirror of 11.1 by 9.8 m. It is located close to the town of Sutherland in the semi-desert region of the Karoo, South Africa. It is a facility of the South African Astronomical Observatory, the national optical observatory of South Africa.
The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) is a telescope located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is housed in an enclosure immediately adjacent to the four Very Large Telescope (VLT) Unit Telescopes on the summit of Cerro Paranal. The VST is a wide-field survey telescope with a field of view twice as broad as the full Moon. It is the largest telescope in the world designed to exclusively survey the sky in visible light.
The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is a ground-based extremely large telescope under construction, as part of the Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP), as of 2022. It will consist of seven 8.4 m (27.6 ft) diameter primary segments, that will observe optical and near infrared (320–25000 nm) light, with the resolving power of a 24.5 m (80.4 ft) primary mirror and collecting area equivalent to a 22.0 m (72.2 ft) one, which is about 368 square meters. The telescope is expected to have a resolving power 10 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope. As of November 2017, five mirrors had been cast and the construction of the summit facility has begun.
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is an astronomical observatory currently under construction. When completed, it is planned to be the world's largest optical/near-infrared extremely large telescope. Part of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) agency, it is located on top of Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.
The Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Science is an astronomical observatory, set up in 1966 in the USSR, and now operated by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Based in the Bolshoi Zelenchuk Valley of the Greater Caucasus near the village of Nizhny Arkhyz, the observatory houses the BTA-6 and RATAN-600, an optical and radio telescope, respectively. The two instruments are about 20 km (12 mi) apart.
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is an under-construction extremely large telescope (ELT) that has become controversial due to its planned location on Mauna Kea, on the island of Hawaii. The TMT would become the largest visible-light telescope on Mauna Kea.
A segmented mirror is an array of smaller mirrors designed to act as segments of a single large curved mirror. The segments can be either spherical or asymmetric. They are used as objectives for large reflecting telescopes. To function, all the mirror segments have to be polished to a precise shape and actively aligned by a computer-controlled active optics system using actuators built into the mirror support cell.
The California Extremely Large Telescope(CELT) was a proposal for an extremely large telescope design first proposed in the 1990s by a consortium of Californian Universities. The design was for a segmented 30 m diameter astronomical telescope. The CELT had a positive reception and continued to be developed, and was renamed The Thirty Meter Telescope around 2003–4. The CELT was one of the earlier and more successful proposals for extremely large telescopes.
The Vacuum Tower Telescope is an evacuated-optics solar telescope located at the Teide Observatory on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. It is operated by the Kiepenheuer-Institut für Sonnenphysik (KIS).
The Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor, commonly known as LUVOIR, is a multi-wavelength space telescope concept being developed by NASA under the leadership of a Science and Technology Definition Team. It is one of four large astrophysics space mission concepts studied in preparation for the National Academy of Sciences 2020 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey.