Casting a $20 million mirror for the world's largest telescope - video

[Jon]

Casting a $20 million mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope, which, upon completion, will be the world's largest telescope. 2:25 video:

More: https://www.gmto.org

Previously: How to make a mirror - GIF

[bruce.desertrat]

The Richard Caris Mirror lab; about 3/4 miles from my office :-) It's a really neat place. I had a friend who worked there and he had a huge chunk of leftover glass from the MMT casting mounted on a pedestal in his living room with a light under it. HE's in that picture of the MMT casting, somewhere

[Frank S]

With the technological advancements in pod driven drone aircraft. I foresee these technologies to spin into much lrger air frames in the near future where special purpose heavy lifting VTOL aircraft would be capable of lifting anc carrying the 20 ton mirror as a solid single casting plus the 20 to 30 ton cradle it will require to support it. America and Russia have both had large heavy lift helicopters capable of lifting over 10 tons for nearly 50 years. But advancements in heavy lift VTOL had stalled out due to limitations in rotor size But I think we could see many changes soon
If they had one of the aircraft like I am thinking about it would be no problem in transporting a 1 piece mirror

[bruce.desertrat]

One of the other advantages of the multi-mirror design is adaptive optics: each mirror can be controlled individually to compensate for atmospheric distortion of the image. There are scopes on earth that can get sharper images than even spaceborne telescopes like Hubble because of this.

[ranald]

thanks for posting Jon! Absolutely, one of the best sides of tech growth. LOVE it: hopefully good for all of us.
I've heard that the Chinese have built a sun & moon ready for the holocaust or something: may be hipe, but i'm wrestling with that idea..