PHOTO: Damien Jemison, Giant Magellan Telescope – GMTO Corporation
The Giant Magellan Telescope and Rockford, Ill.-based Ingersoll Machine Tools Inc., part of the Italian Camozzi Group, announced the start of manufacturing and assembly of the largest telescope mount built in the United States. The 22-meter-diameter concrete pier was engineered to protect the telescope during seismic events in the Chilean Atacama Desert.
The 39-meter-tall precision moving structure was developed in partnership with OHB Digital Connect. Once assembled, which will take six years, the mount will undergo performance testing before being shipped nearly 6,000 miles to the Giant Magellan Telescope site in Chile for reassembly.
“We are proud to be a part of developing and building the mount structure for the Giant Magellan Telescope. Ingersoll’s rich history of building very large, complex, and very accurate machine tools complements the unique design of the telescope and the impressive engineering capability of our partner company OHB in Germany,” says Jeffrey Kimberly, chief operating officer of Ingersoll Machine Tools. “The collective expertise of this entire team is what makes it possible to build this impressive scientific wonder that will lead to new discoveries that are beyond our imagination with today’s current capabilities.”
The Giant Magellan Telescope mount weighs 2,100 metric tons and is designed to support seven of the world’s largest mirrors, adaptive optics, and scientific instruments. Despite its immense size, the mount is remarkably agile, gliding frictionless on a film of oil just 50 microns thick, resisting image quality disruptions and allowing it to track celestial objects billions of light years away.
“Our cost-effective design enables us to build the Giant Magellan Telescope faster and with less risk, all while achieving the broadest range of scientific capabilities,” notes Robert Shelton, president of the Giant Magellan Telescope. “Ingersoll’s global experience in manufacturing giant precision structures has been instrumental on our way to becoming one of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world.”
Advancement of mount fabrication marks a major milestone for the Giant Magellan Telescope, now 40% under construction across 36 states and on track to be operational in Chile by the early 2030s.