Well, almost...

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project is a public-private partnership that fulfills the goals of a concept called the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT), which was identified in the National Academy of Sciences report “Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium” as the highest-priority new ground-based facility for the first decade of the 21st century.

The goal of the TMT project is to construct an extremely large telescope based on more than 700 hexagonal-shaped mirror segments that stretch a total of 30 meters in diameter.

TMT

Monday, October 31, 2005

Plans are under way to build the world's largest telescope in a Port Coquitlam warehouse.

The international engineering firm Amec is taking the lead in plans to build the huge device known as the Thirty Metre Telescope.

Amec's communications manager, John Kageorge, said the scope, which will take at least 10 years to build, is a big leap from existing technology.

"In a sense, today, astronomers are looking at stars with a black-and-white television from the '50s. This telescope will give them HDTV --large screen, too," said Kageorge.

The observatory building that will house the mammoth telescope will be the size of four football fields. The telescope itself will be one football field in size. Suggested locations for its eventual home are northern Chile, northern Mexico, and at the top of the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, where many observatories are already located.

The project is the work of an international consortium of universities. Construction is set to begin in 2008.

Vancouver Province

(Port Coquitlam is a Vancouver suburb)

Are you getting a new neighbour, RL?