On June 3, 2015 our announcement of the start of construction was covered by over 100 media outlets across the globe. Below are some great articles about the announcement.

Mashable: Giant new telescope set to break ground in Chile later this year

CNN: World’s largest telescope to explore universe’s deepest secrets

BBC: Magellan super-scope gets green light for construction

Engineering.com: World’s Largest Earthbound Telescope to Outperform Hubble

Popular Mechanics: The Biggest Telescope in the World Is About to Begin Construction

ABC Los Angeles: VIDEO: GIANT MAGELLAN TELESCOPE CONSTRUCTION BEGINS

Business Insider Australia: Australia will help build the world’s largest telescope which could detect other life within the universe

Chicago Tribune: Largest telescope gets approval for construction

Collaborators secure over US$500 million for historic project to build giant optical telescope

PASADENA, Calif. – June 3, 2015 – The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization has announced today that its 11 international partners have committed more than US$500 million to begin construction of the first of a new generation of extremely large telescopes. Once it is built, the Giant Magellan Telescope is poised to be the largest optical telescope in the world.

The Giant Magellan Telescope’s seven mirrors span 25 meters and will focus more than six times the amount of light of the current largest optical telescopes into images up to 10 times sharper than those of the Hubble Space Telescope. The GMT will enable astronomers to look deeper into space and further back in time than ever before. The telescope is expected to see first light in 2021 and be fully operational by 2024.

“The GMT will herald the beginning of a new era in astronomy. It will reveal the first objects to emit light in the universe, explore the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter, and identify potentially habitable planets in the Earth’s galactic neighborhood,” said Wendy Freedman, chair of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) Board of Directors and University Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. “The decision by the GMTO partner institutions to start construction is a crucial milestone on our journey to making these amazing discoveries using state-of-the-art science, technology and engineering.”

GMTO President Edward Moses said, “The GMT is a global scientific collaboration, with institutional partners in Australia, Brazil, Korea, the United States, and in host nation Chile. The construction approval means work will begin on the telescope’s core structure and the scientific instruments that lie at the heart of this US$1 billion project. Early preparation for construction has included groundwork at the mountaintop site at Las Campanas in northern Chile, and initial fabrication of the telescope’s seven enormous primary mirror segments.”

Professor Matthew Colless, Vice Chair of the Board of Directors and Director of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at The Australian National University, said the construction approval was an exciting moment for astronomy.

“Plans that have existed only in two dimensions or as computer models are about to become a three-dimensional reality in glass, steel, and high-tech semiconductor and composite materials,” said Colless. “The Giant Magellan Telescope will provide astronomers and astrophysicists with the opportunity to truly transform our view of the universe and our place within it.”

To access our video news package including interviews with GMTO partners and b-roll, as well as images and video graphics of the Giant Magellan Telescope, please visit: www.gmto.org/gallery.

About the Giant Magellan Telescope

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is slated to be the first in a new class of extremely large telescopes, capable of producing images with 10 times the clarity of those captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The GMT aims to discover Earth-like planets around nearby stars and the tiny distortions that black holes cause in the light from distant stars and galaxies. It will reveal the faintest objects ever seen in space, including extremely distant and ancient galaxies, the light from which has been travelling to Earth since shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. The telescope will be built at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory in the dry, clear air of Chile’s Atacama Desert, in a dome 22 stories high. GMT is expected to see first light in 2021 and be fully operational by 2024.

The telescope’s 25.4-meter (82 feet) primary mirror will comprise seven separate 8.4-meter (27 feet) diameter segments. Each mirror segment weighs 17 tons and takes one year to cast and cool, followed by more than three years of surface generation and meticulous polishing at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab of the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz. Funding for the project comes from the partner institutions, governments and private donors.

About the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization

The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) manages the GMT project on behalf of its international partners: Astronomy Australia Ltd., The Australian National University, Carnegie Institution for Science, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, Harvard University, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Texas A&M University, The University of Arizona, The University of Chicago, and The University of Texas at Austin.

Connect with the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization on social media: gplus.to/gmtelescope, twitter.com/GMTelescope, facebook.com/GMTelescope and visit http://www.gmto.org.

Media contacts:

Sarah Lewis
Phone: 650-801-0937
E-mail: sarah.lewis@zenogroup.com

Steve Koppes
Phone: 773-702-8366
Email: skoppes@uchicago.edu

Davin Malasarn
Phone: 626-204-0529
E-mail: dmalasarn@gmto.org

Business contacts:

Edward Moses
President of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization
(+1) 626-204-0555

Wendy Freedman
Chair, Board of Directors, Giant Magellan Telescope Organization
(+1) 773-834-5651

Matthew Colless
Vice-Chair, Board of Directors, Giant Magellan Telescope Organization
Director, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics
The Australian National University
(+61) 2-6125-0266

The 25th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope was on April 24, 2015. To celebrate, GMTO Director, Patrick McCarthy, talked to several media outlets about his experience helping to guide the design of the Wide Field Camera 3. The resulting articles are below.

Nature World News by Brian Stallard. “Hail the Hubble: Experts Talk About the Iconic Telescope’s 25 Years in Space” 

Engadget by Mariella Moon. “Hubble turns 25: The past, present and future”

NBCNews by Alan Boyle. “Hubble Space Telescope Turns 25, With Discoveries and Drama Galore”

Space.com by Elizabeth Howell. “Beyond Hubble: Future Space Observatories Will Carry Telescope’s Legacy Forward”

Ars Technica by John Timmer: “25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope” 

Washington Post by Joel Achenbach. “Still sharp, Hubble Space Telescope turns 25 with a cloudy future”

The Register by Ian Thomson. “Hubble hits 25th anniversary IN SPAAACE – time for telescope to come home” 

The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization is hosting a three-day conference on the topics of resolved stellar populations and galaxy formation. Scientists from around the world will gather at the Asilomar Conference Grounds on the Monterey Peninsula in California to discuss the state of the field in topics ranging from using galaxies as cosmological probes, near-field and far-field connections, dwarf demographics, and galactic archeology.

Registration is free, and travel support is provided for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers.

Registration deadline: September 1, 2015
Abstract submission deadline: July 1, 2015

Visit the conference website here.

From The Canberra Times:

Professor Peter McGregor has been remembered for his pivotal role in rebuilding the Mount Stromlo Observatory following the 2003 bushfires, after losing his battle with cancer.

Professor McGregor will be farewelled at a funeral on Wednesday after his death from throat cancer last Thursday, aged 59.

As well as working on his own on research at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics focusing on star formation and black holes, Professor McGregor was best known for building instruments for astronomical telescopes all over the world, the school’s director Professor Matthew Colless said.

He and his team had been working on a new instrument for the 25-metre Giant Magellan telescope and in the past he had built two instruments for the eight-metre Gemini telescopes in Hawaii and Chile.

Read the full Canberra Times article here.