The Giant Magellan Telescope will be four times more powerful than the James Webb Telescope

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Photo: GMTO Corporation/Disclosure

machine stronger than James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) You should start working by the end of this decade.

We are talking about the Giant Magellanic Telescope (GMT), which has just received a new investment of US$205 million to speed up its construction.

The main mirror of the equipment has a diameter of 25 meters, and consists of seven sections with a diameter of 8.4 meters. It will have, in total, a light-gathering area ten times larger than that of James Webb, providing images Four times more severe.

The size will give the telescope the title of space equipment with the largest mirror ever built. In addition, it will be 200 times more powerful than the active observatories on Earth today.

But don’t think GMT will be an alternative. Unlike the Hubble and Webb telescopes, it will be mounted on the planet’s surface – more specifically, at the Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert (Chile).

In fact, it will complement JWST’s research by studying the physics and chemistry of dim light sources previously discovered by its predecessor.

Construction of six of the seven basic mirror parts of the Giant Magellan Telescope has already begun and the area where the machine will be installed has already been cleared. Funding should give the project a boost.

The Carnegie Institution for Science, Harvard, Chicago, and Texas universities, and all American institutions, as well as the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Fapesp), in Brazil, all contributed to this value.

Fapesp’s $45 million contribution will allow Brazilian researchers to devote time to using the telescope. There are no predictions yet for GMT operations to begin, but the researchers hope to have their first images by 2029.