[ASA] Giant Magellan Telescope colloquia

[Yeshe Fenner]

Dear ASA members,

The Director of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) Organisation, Dr Patrick
McCarthy, will be touring Australia in March to speak about the science
goals and current status of the GMT project, in which Australia is a
partner. He will also be joining Prof Matthew Colless for a public event
<http://rsaa.anu.edu.au/news-events/giant-magellan-telescope-solving-big-eng
ineering-challenges-do-big-science>  in Canberra on Tuesday 4th March.

The abstract and schedule for the talks are below. 

Kind regards,

Yeshe Fenner

Dr Yeshe Fenner
Executive Officer
Astronomy Australia Ltd
T: 03 9214 5520
M: 0430 708 995

*******************************************

Title: The Giant Magellan Telescope Project

Speaker: Dr. Patrick McCarthy is Director of the Giant Magellan Telescope
Project. He received his Ph. D. in Astronomy from U. C. Berkeley in 1988. He
went to the Carnegie Observatories first as a Carnegie Fellow and then as a
Hubble Fellow in 1991. In 1993 he joined the scientific staff at Carnegie.
His research is focused on understanding the evolution of massive galaxies
at intermediate and high redshifts. As GMT Project Director he is
responsible for the overall scientific mission of the project.

Abstract: The Giant Magellan Telescope project is an international
collaboration to design, build and operate a 25m telescope for research in
exoplanet science, general astrophysics and cosmology. The consortium is
composed of the ANU, Astronomy Australia Limited, the Korea Astronomy and
Space Science Institute and several US universities and research institutes.
The GMT primary mirror is comprised of seven 8.4m diameter segments,
providing both a collecting area and diffraction-limited image concentration
that are an order of magnitude better than those offered by current
facilities. The telescope will be located at Las Campanas Observatory in
Chile and will access the same region of the sky as SkyMapper, LSST,
MWA/SKA, ALMA and a number of other surveys and front-line facilities. 

I will review the scientific goals of the project and the current technical
status. The project has recently passed a series of rigorous design and cost
reviews and is preparing to start the construction phase. The GMT will have
the widest field of view of any of the proposed ELTs. Adaptive optics is
integral to the telescope via a segmented adaptive secondary mirror. These
attributes will position GMT to advance astrophysics on a broad front,
addressing key problems in the study of potentially habitable planets,
galaxy and structure formation, chemical evolution in the Milky Way, as well
as cosmology and fundamental physics.

 

Colloquia schedule:

·         Monday 3rd March 2014, 10AM-11AM, Swinburne University, Virtual
Reality Theatre (coffee and nibbles at Haddon’s Café from 9:30AM-10AM)

·         Tuesday 4th March 2014, 1:30PM–2:30PM, Mt Stromlo Observatory,
Canberra

·         Public Event: “The Giant Magellan Telescope: Solving Big
Engineering Challenges to do Big Science
<http://rsaa.anu.edu.au/news-events/giant-magellan-telescope-solving-big-eng
ineering-challenges-do-big-science> ”, Dr McCarthy in conversation with Prof
Matthew Colless. Tuesday 4th March 2014, 6PM-7PM, ANU Law Link Theatre,
Canberra.

·         Friday 7th March 2014, 2PM-4PM, ICRAR/UWA, Perth

·         Monday 10th March 2014, 1:30PM-3:30PM, Australian Astronomical
Observatory, North Ryde, Sydney

 

 

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