In the year 2023, the Giant Magellan Telescope is to be put into use. The astronomical device, which is to stand at the Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile, has giant mirrors - each with a diameter of 8.4 meters, each cast of 15 tons of glass and polished with unprecedented precision. This is how the creation of this scientific work of art looks like.
The main mirror of the telescope consists essentially of seven smaller elements, each of which is itself great - cast from 15 tons of glass, which have cooled down for half a year before grinding. Grinding itself is unusual, because it required precision of several nanometers.
Thanks to all this, the telescope is supposed to offer the same optics as a single mirror with a diameter of 24.5 meters and a 10 times higher resolution than offered by the Hubble Space Telescope. And thanks to him, astronomers want to reach even further into the universe's histria, approaching the moment when galaxies were just beginning to appear.