Commitment Overview

In 2003, the Foundation committed $17.5 million to fund a detailed design study of the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT). These initial funds supported the California Institute of Technology and the University of California in early design and development plans for the TMT observatory. In August 2007, the Foundation increased its commitment to the California Institute of Technology and the Regents of the University of California with an additional $7.5 million each for the development of the TMT. In December 2007, the Foundation pledged an additional $200 million for its design and construction.

The TMT will be the world’s largest ground-based optical/infrared telescope, and will represent the forefront of technology in every aspect of its design:

• The structure will consist of a primary mirror with 492 individual 1.45-meter segments that together measure 30 meters in diameter, providing more than eight times the collecting area of the current largest telescope.
• All mirrored segments will be guided with precision computer control in order to work together as one single mirror, building on the technology developed for the 10-meter mirrors in the two Keck telescopes in Hawaii.
• Adaptive optics (AO) will allow the TMT to achieve a resolution superior to that of the Hubble Space Telescope, using six laser beams to create six luminous spots in a layer of sodium atoms high in Earth's upper atmosphere. These bright artificial stars serve as references for measuring the turbulence in the atmosphere, allowing the AO system to compensate for blurring of starlight by Earth's fluctuating atmosphere. This technology was pioneered at the Lick Observatory 3-meter telescope and has been developed further at the Palomar 5-meter and Keck 10-meter telescopes.

When complete, the TMT observatory will enable researchers to peer back in space and time to the formation of the first stars and galaxies, and will directly image planets orbiting other stars.

The TMT project is a collaboration between Caltech, UC, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA), with significant work being done by industry and by university teams studying instrument designs. The project office is in Pasadena, California. Completion of TMT’s design is expected in 2009.