TMT - Thirty Meter Telescope

The Thirty Meter Telescope project has completed the design and development phase and is preparing for construction. The partners are Canada (NRC and ACURA, the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy), the University of California, and the California Institute of Technology. NRC-HIA is involved in several aspects of this project including adaptive optics, enclosure, instrumentation, and systems engineering studies.

Technical overview of the project

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project has completed the design and development phase and is preparing for construction. The project partners are developing a 30-metre diameter, finely segmented filled-aperture telescope with seeing-limited and diffraction-limited capabilities to address a broad range of science goals. The overall TMT project office is located in Pasadena, California. Within Canada the TMT project is distributed between NRC-HIA and several universities including the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria. The TMT project follows recommendations by both the Long Range Plan for Astronomy in Canada and the U.S. Decadal Survey to provide a 30-metre-class telescope in the era of the Atacama Large Millimetre Array, and the James Webb Space Telescope. Within Canada, our entry into the TMT partnership follows our highly successful Very-Large Optical Telescope (VLOT) 20-m telescope study, which was completed in 2003.

Quick facts (see also www.tmt.org)

• The observatory will be located atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and will start site construction in 2011 and operations in 2018.
• TMT will have 100 times the sensitivity of the best existing observatories.
• The field of view will be 1/3 of a degree on the sky, equivalent to 2/3 of the full moon.
• The resolution of TMT is equivalent to being able to see a loonie coin at 800 kilometres.
• TMT is an optical-infrared observatory, observing at wavelengths from 0.31 to 28 microns.
• The primary mirror, 30 metres in diameter, will be formed by 492 1.4-m hexagonal mirror segments.
• The observatory will include a full suite of instruments, including spectrographs and cameras, capable of exploiting the tremendous power of the telescope.
• The telescope steel structure and its outer enclosure, which is 66 m in diameter, are designed in Canada.

Current Status

The key features of the TMT design include:

• 30-metre f/1 filled-aperture primary with 492 hexagonal mirror segments
• f/15 final focus
• Field of view is 20 arcminutes
• Elevation axis in front of the primary mirror
• Wavelength coverage from 0.31 to 28 microns
• Operational zenith angle range from 1 to 65 degrees from zenith
• Both seeing-limited and adaptive optics observing modes
• Innovative Canadian-designed calotte enclosure.

TMT Telescope

Facility with Calotte Enclosure (Canadian design)

NFIRAOS Adaptive Optics System (NRC-HIA design)

The initial suite of instruments and adaptive optics systems has been defined and conceptual designs have been developed. The observatory will be located atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and will start operations in 2018.

The current suite of first-light instruments includes:

1. IRIS (Infrared Imaging Spectrograph)
2. WFOS (Wide-Field Optical Spectrograph)
3. IRMOS (Infrared Multi-Object Spectrograph)
4. NFIRAOS (Narrow-Field Adaptive Optics System)

Opportunities

Canada is currently involved in several aspects of the project including the definition of the science case and requirements, design of the telescope and enclosure structures, design of the instrumentation and adaptive optics systems, development of reflective coatings, site testing, detailed modeling of the performance of the telescope and adaptive optics systems, site testing on Mauna Kea (Hawaii), and the development of the observatory software architecture.

Related Information

Read more about TMT - Thirty Meter Telescope:

Narrow-Field Infrared Adaptive Optics System (NFIRAOS)

The following hyperlinks are to sites of organizations or other entities that are not subject to the Official Languages Act. The material found there is therefore in the language(s) used by the sites in question.

Ces hyperliens donnent accès à des sites d'organismes qui ne sont pas assujettis à la Loi sur les langues officielles. L'information qui s'y trouve est donc dans la langue du site.

	TMT Main Page
	University of Toronto TMT Page
	Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA)

Institutes:

• NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics