Matt Johns

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)

The conceptual design phase for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) has been completed and the project is continuing the development of the telescope structure and instrumentation. The upper truss of the telescope has been revised to reduce the tilt of the secondary mirror assembly, which was the major contributor to image blur caused by windshake of the structure. A factor of 5-10 reduction is obtained in the static analysis. The generation of the first 8.4 m off-axis mirror blank for GMT is nearing completion. The metrology for grinding and polishing the mirror to its final figure has been designed and is being constructed. Multiple, independent tests are provided to verify the final mirror figure and insure mirror-to-mirror repeatability. Loose abrasive grinding and polishing of the mirror is ready to start with mirror completion expected in early 2009. GMT instruments mount in the telescope below the primary mirror. The candidate list of first generation instruments is provided. Las Campanas Observatory has been selected as the site for GMT.

Giant Magellan Telescope: overview

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is a 25-meter optical/infrared extremely large telescope that is being built by an international consortium of universities and research institutions. It will be located at the Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. The GMT primary mirror consists of seven 8.4-m borosilicate honeycomb mirror segments made at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab (SOML). Six identical off-axis segments and one on-axis segment are arranged on a single nearly-paraboloidal parent surface having an overall focal ratio of f/0.7. The fabrication, testing and verification procedures required to produce the closely-matched off-axis mirror segments were developed during the production of the first mirror. Production of the second and third off-axis segments is underway. GMT incorporates a seven-segment Gregorian adaptive secondary to implement three modes of adaptive-optics operation: natural-guide star AO, laser-tomography AO, and ground-layer AO. A wide-field corrector/ADC is available for use in seeing-limited mode over a 20-arcmin diameter field of view. Up to seven instruments can be mounted simultaneously on the telescope in a large Gregorian Instrument Rotator. Conceptual design studies were completed for six AO and seeing-limited instruments, plus a multi-object fiber feed, and a roadmap for phased deployment of the GMT instrument suite is being developed. The partner institutions have made firm commitments for approximately 45% of the funds required to build the telescope. Project Office efforts are currently focused on advancing the telescope and enclosure design in preparation for subsystem- and system-level preliminary design reviews which are scheduled to be completed in the first half of 2013.

Progress on the GMT

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is being developed by a consortium of major US and international educational and research institutions. The 25 meter next-generation telescope will be located at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The project has completed the conceptual design of the telescope and enclosure and is currently in the Design Development Phase leading up to construction. Various refinements have been made to the telescope structure since the Conceptual Design. These include the modification of the upper truss structure to reduce image blur due to wind shake and the design of a 9 meter rotator for large Gregorian instruments. An integral field spectrograph has been added to the candidate list of first-generation instruments. The primary mirror for GMT consists of seven 8.4 meter diameter segments. The first of the six, highly aspheric, off-axis segments has been cast and generated at the University of Arizona SOML with completion of the mirror expected in 2009. The metrology for polishing the segments is currently being installed in the new test tower at SOML. Verification tests that independently measure the mirror figure have been designed and are also being implemented. This paper summarizes the overall design and recent progress in the technical development of GMT and in characterizing the site.

Overview and status of the Giant Magellan Telescope project

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is a 25.4-m diameter, optical/infrared telescope that is being built by an international consortium of universities and research institutions as one of the next generation of Extremely Large Telescopes. The primary mirror of GMT consists of seven 8.4 m borosilicate honeycomb mirror segments that are optically conjugate to seven corresponding segments in the Gregorian secondary mirror. Fabrication is complete for one primary mirror segment and is underway for the next two. The final focal ratio of the telescope is f/8.2, so that the focal plane has an image scale of 1.02 arcsec/mm. GMT will be commissioned using a fast-steering secondary mirror assembly comprised of conventional, rigid segments to provide seeing-limited observations. A secondary mirror with fully adaptive segments will be used in standard operation to additionally enable ground-layer and diffraction-limited adaptive optics. In the seeing limited mode, GMT will provide a 10 arcmin field of view without field correction. A 20 arcmin field of view will be obtained using a wide-field corrector and atmospheric dispersion compensator. The project has recently completed a series of sub-system and system-level preliminary design reviews and is currently preparing to move into the construction phase. This paper summarizes the technical development of the GMT sub-systems and the current status of the GMT project.

Modeling the adaptive optics systems on the Giant Magellan Telescope

Modeling adaptive optics (AO) systems is crucial to understanding their performance and a key aid in their design. The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is planning three AO modes at first light: natural guide star AO, ground-layer AO and laser tomography AO. This paper describes how a modified version of YAO, an open-source general-purpose AO simulation tool written in Yorick, is used to simulate the GMT AO modes. The simulation tool was used to determine the piston segment error for the GMT. In addition, we present a comparison of different turbulence simulation approaches.

Giant Magellan Telescope site testing: summary

Cerro Las Campanas located at Las Campanas Observatory (LCO) in Chile has been selected as the site for the Giant Magellan Telescope. We report results obtained since the commencement, in 2005, of a systematic site testing survey of potential GMT sites at LCO. Meteorological (cloud cover, temperature, pressure, wind, and humidity) and DIMM seeing data have been obtained at three potential sites, and are compared with identical data taken at the site of the twin Magellan 6.5m telescopes. In addition, measurements of the turbulence profile of the free-atmosphere above LCO have been collected with a MASS/DIMM. Furthermore, we consider photometric quality, light pollution, and precipitable water vapor (PWV). LCO, and Co. Las Campanas in particular, have dark skies, little or no risk of future light pollution, excellent seeing, moderate winds, PWV adequate for mid-IR astronomy during a reasonable fraction of the nights, and a high fraction of clear nights overall. Finally, Co. Las Campanas meets or exceeds all the defined science requirements.

Development of GMT Fast Steering Secondary Mirror Assembly

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is one of Extremely large telescopes, which is 25m in diameter featured with two Gregorian secondary mirrors, an adaptive secondary mirror (ASM) and a fast-steering secondary mirror (FSM). The FSM is 3.2 m in diameter and built as seven 1.1 m diameter circular segments conjugated 1:1 to the seven 8.4m segments of the primary. The guiding philosophy in the design of the FSM segment mirror is to minimize development and fabrication risks ensuring a set of secondary mirrors are available on schedule for telescope commissioning and early operations in a seeing limited mode. Each FSM segment contains a tip-tilt capability for fine co-alignment of the telescope subapertures and fast guiding to attenuate telescope wind shake and mount control jitter, thus optimizing the seeing limited performance of the telescope. The final design of the FSM mirror and support system configuration was optimized using finite element analyses and optical performance analyses. The optical surface deformations, image qualities, and structure functions for the gravity print-through cases, thermal gradient effects, and dynamic performances were evaluated. The results indicated that the GMT FSM mirror and its support system will favorably meet the optical performance goals for residual surface error and the FSM surface figure accuracy requirement defined by encircled energy (EE80) in the focal plane. The mirror cell assembly analysis indicated an excellent dynamic stiffness which will support the goal of tip-tilt operation.

The GMT adaptive optics system

The design of the adaptive optics (AO) system for the GMT is currently being developed. The baseline system is planned around a segmented adaptive secondary mirror (ASM), with elements similar in size to current ASMs for 8 m telescopes. A facility wavefront sensing system is planned to provide AO correction at several science instrument ports. The AO system will contain a subsystem dedicated to controlling the relative phases between the seven segments of the GMT aperture. The anticipated modes include natural guide star, laser tomography, and ground layer adaptive optics. A cooled optical relay is described to provide baffling and reimaging of the focal plane to the various science ports. The laser projection system will use six beacons on an adjustable radius to support both diffraction-limited and ground layer correction modes. Modeling work, as well as science instrument design development will be integrated with this design effort to develop a concept that provides efficient diffraction-limited performance and seeing-improved capabilities for the GMT.

Giant Magellan Telescope site testing seeing and turbulence statistics

Cerro Las Campanas located at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile has been selected as the site for the Giant Magellan Telescope. We report results obtained since the commencement, in 2005, of a systematic site testing survey of potential GMT sites at LCO. Seeing data have been obtained at three potential sites, and are compared with identical data taken at the site of the twin Magellan 6.5m telescopes. In addition, measurements of the turbulence profile of the free-atmosphere have been collected. Co. Las Camapanas and the Magellan site are nearly identical in their seeing statistics, and apparently their average ground-layer characteristics.

Design and manufacture of 8.4 m primary mirror segments and supports for the GMT

The design, manufacture and support of the primary mirror segments for the GMT build on the successful primary mirror systems of the MMT, Magellan and Large Binocular telescopes. The mirror segment and its support system are based on a proven design, and the experience gained in the existing telescopes has led to significant refinements that will provide even better performance in the GMT. The first 8.4 m segment has been cast at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, and optical processing is underway. Measurement of the off-axis surface is the greatest challenge in the manufacture of the segments. A set of tests that meets the requirements has been defined and the concepts have been developed in some detail. The most critical parts of the tests have been demonstrated in the measurement of a 1.7 m off-axis prototype. The principal optical test is a full-aperture, high-resolution null test in which a hybrid reflective-diffractive null corrector compensates for the 14 mm aspheric departure of the off-axis segment. The mirror support uses the same synthetic floatation principle as the MMT, Magellan, and LBT mirrors. Refinements for GMT include 3-axis actuators to accommodate the varying orientations of segments in the telescope.