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| GIANT Magellan Telescope |
| Dr. Dan Fabricant |
| Thursday, Feb 8, 2007 at 8:00 PM |
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Construction of the world’s largest, state-of-the-art, next generation telescope is underway. The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is a 25 meter diameter optical-infrared telescope that will be sited in Chile. It is being designed and funded by a consortium of institutions including the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, with a planned completion date of 2016. GMT’s key science areas include formation of the very first stars and galaxies, the nature of planets beyond the solar system, and new discoveries. This month, Dr. Dan Fabricant, Senior Physicist at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Project Scientist for the GMT will describe this extremely large telescope and its scientific mission.
The GMT’s giant primary consists of seven 8.4 meter segments, six of which are identical off-axis segments. This arrangement will give the GMT 4.5 times the collecting area of any current optical telescope and the resolving power of a 25.6 meter (84 foot) diameter telescope, or 10 times the resolution of Hubble. The GMT’s primary mirror segments are light-weight spun cast borosilicate mirrors to be cast and polished at the University of Arizona’s Mirror Lab. The first primary segment has been cast and is being prepared for polishing.
Dr. Fabricant, a leader in the design of new instruments for optical astrophysics, led the development of the optical and instrument design for the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) in Arizona. When the MMT was converted from a six 1.8 meter telescope array to a Cassegrain telescope with a 6.5 meter primary, Dr Fabricant served as PI for the MMT conversion instruments including the Hectospec, Wide Field Corrector, Binospec imaging Spectrograph, and f/5 Wavefront Sensor.
His research interests include optical and x-ray astronomy, galaxy clusters, large scale structure and galaxy spectral evolution, and instrumentation for optical astrophysics. Along with his work on the GMT, Dr. Fabricant serves as OIR Division Associate Director, and Associate Editor for Instrumentation Publications for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He has authored /co-authored over 150 papers, and has pioneered the development and design of new technologies for large instrumentation such as the MMT and GMT. Please join us for what will be a most interesting talk.
Please join us for a pre-meeting dinner discussion at Changsho, 1712 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA at 6:00pm before the meeting. |
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