The Thirty Meter Telescope is the only one expected to be built in the Northern Hemisphere. The Giant Magellan Telescope’s mirror will be 24.5 meters, or 80 feet, in diameter. The European Extremely Large Telescope will have a primary mirror measuring 39 meters, or 128 feet, in diameter. Two other giant telescopes are being built in Chile, which also has excellent conditions for astronomy. Other discoveries credited to those sites over the years include the first images of exoplanets and helping identify ‘Oumuamua, the first object from interstellar space, which turned out to be a comet from a distant star system. Ghez used the Keck Observatory there to find our galaxy’s black hole. Black holes at the center of most galaxies are so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape their gravitational pull. He compared the technique to blocking a bright street light in the distance with your thumb then seeing insects circling in the fainter light below. “For the first time in history we will be capable of detecting extraterrestrial life,” Dumas said.ĭumas said the new telescope would use special optics to suppress the light of stars. The new telescope would allow scientists to determine whether their atmospheres contain water vapor or methane which might indicate the presence of life. But they don’t know much about what those planets - called extrasolar planets or exoplanets - are like. During the past 20 years, astronomers have discovered it is common for planets to orbit other stars in the universe. The telescope would be more than 200 times more sensitive than current telescopes and able to resolve objects 12 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope, said Christophe Dumas, head of operations for the Thirty Meter Telescope.
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