Unprecedented History: 6 Countries Create 'Magic Eye' 50 Million Times More Powerful Than Human Eye

The "God's Eye" named GMT is a giant structure, located on a 2,500 meter high mountain top in Chile.

According to plan, by the end of this decade, the world will have the most powerful telescope in history - the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT).

GMT Telescope. (Photo: Giantmagellan.org).

GMT is designed to explore the unknown in the universe . With unprecedented image quality, the seven largest mirrors in the world that make up GMT will project our vision into the cosmos to:

Find Earth-like planets; search for signs of life; Investigate the origins of the universe and solve the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy; Go back in time to explore the formation of the first stars, galaxies, and black holes.

A model image of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) seen from the outside. (Photo: Giantmagellan.org).

After 4 years of construction, as of September 27, 2023, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is about to complete the 7th mirror of a total of 7 large mirrors that create its 368 square meter light-collecting surface.

GMT Glass Daytime "interior" image. (Photo: Giantmagellan.org).

When completed, GMT will be the world's largest and most challenging optical mirror ever built.

Together, the mirrors will collect more light than any other telescope in existence, allowing humanity to unlock the secrets of the universe by providing detailed chemical analyses of celestial objects and their origins.

GMT Glass "interior" image at night. (Photo: Giantmagellan.org).

"With 50 million times the light-gathering power of the human eye , and 200 times more sensitivity than today's best telescopes, the Giant Magellan Telescope will make history through future discoveries.

"We are very excited to be reaching another important milestone in the construction of GMT," said Professor Buell Jannuzi, principal investigator for the GMT mirror segments, director of the Steward Observatory and head of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona (USA).

GMT's Super Outstanding Features

Global effort: The Giant Magellan Telescope is an international project, with the participation of 13 research organizations from 6 countries, including the US, Chile, Israel, Australia, Brazil, and South Korea.

The telescope is being built in Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the best places on Earth to explore space.

13 organizations from 6 countries joined hands to create the "wonder" GMT. (Photo: Giantmagellan.org).

The Giant Magellan Telescope is a quantum leap in scale. (Photo: Giantmagellan.org).

Cutting-edge technology: GMT will eliminate the blurring effects caused by Earth's atmospheric turbulence with an advanced pre-focus adaptive optics system, delivering 4 to 10 times the resolution of today's best space-based telescopes.

Clever engineering: The GMT will produce the highest possible image resolution of the universe across the widest field of view with just two light-gathering surfaces.

This makes the GMT the most optically powerful telescope of all telescopes in the 30 meter diameter class.

Cross section of the entire GMT structure, including the case, column and telescope support. (Photo: Giantmagellan.org).

New power: GMT will hunt for habitable planets and determine whether molecules in their atmospheres are produced by life — a capability that today's telescopes cannot measure in the visible spectrum because of a lack of sensitivity and resolution.

The GMT telescope's "crown jewel" will be a seven-panel mirror.

When all seven panels are in place, they will act together as a single light-collecting surface measuring 25.4 meters across — about the same diameter as an adult blue whale, Giantmagellan.org reports.

Once completed, the mirror will have 200 times the sensitivity and four times the image resolution of today's most advanced space telescopes.

University of Arizona Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab staff place blocks of Ohara E6 low-expansion glass into a mold to cast primary mirror segment 5, October 2017. (Photo: Damien Jemison/GMTO Corporation).

The process of making GMT's giant mirrors shows the hard work of international experts.

A few days ago, the University of Arizona's Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory closed the lid on the large rotating tank beneath the stands of the University of Arizona's Arizona Wildcats Football Stadium in the US.

Staff at the University of Arizona's Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory place 20 tons of Ohara E6 low-expansion glass into a mold to cast the Giant Magellan Telescope's seventh primary mirror segment in September 2023. (Photo: Damien Jemison/GMTO Corporation).

This unique rotating tank holds 20 tons of the purest optical glass . It heats the glass to 1,165 degrees Celsius so that when it melts, it is forced outward to form the curved paraboloid surface of the mirror.

Measuring 8.4 meters in diameter, the mirror will cool for the next three to four months before moving on to the polishing stage, Space reported.

The rotating tank lid closes to cast the primary mirror segment of GMT No. 7 at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory. (Photo: Damien Jemison/GMTO Corporation).

Each mirror has to be of the highest quality and that takes time. This last mirror will take 4 months to cool.

Technicians will then begin grinding and polishing its surface to an astronomically precise finish – perfect within one-thousandth the width of a human hair.

The primary mirror is polished at the University of Arizona's Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory, March 2018. (Photo: Damien Jemison/GMTO Corporation).

University of Arizona technicians look up at the back of primary mirror number 5, in April 2019. (Photo: Damien Jemison/GMTO Corporation).

By early 2024, this primary mirror will be integrated into a giant support system prototype for final optical performance testing.

This test will serve as a dress rehearsal for all seven main mirrors.

View of the 2,500-meter-high Las Campanas Peak (southern Chile's Atacama Desert) - the future home of the GMT Glass. (Photo: Giantmagellan.org).

The entire construction site seen from above. (Photo: Giantmagellan.org).

Technicians dig a foundation for the GMT Glass support pillar in 2019. (Photo: Damien Jemison/GMTO Corporation).

"We are in a critical phase of manufacturing, with the majority of manufacturing taking place in the United States," said Robert Shelton, president of the Giant Magellan Telescope.

The structure of the 39-meter-tall telescope is also being manufactured using 2,100 tons of American steel at a newly built manufacturing facility in Rockford, Illinois, USA.

'The GMT's combination of light-gathering power, efficiency, and extremely high imaging resolution will enable us to make new discoveries across all areas of astronomy,' said Rebecca Bernstein, Chief Scientist of the GMT.

The GMT Observatory is located on a 2,500-meter-high mountain in Chile. (Photo: Giantmagellan.org).

The GTM telescope promises to shed light on many mysteries of the universe for mankind. (Photo: Giantmagellan.org).

GMT's unique combination of superior characteristics gives scientists the ability to study planets at high spatial resolution and high spectral resolution - both of which are key to determining whether a planet has a rocky composition like Earth; as well as whether it contains liquid water and whether its atmosphere contains the right stuff."

The GMT telescope is expected to go into 'hunting' later this decade and will be at its most active to answer some of humanity's most pressing questions: Where did we come from? Are we alone in the universe?