| Astrophysicists Plan Ambitious Telescope |
| Sunday, 08 May 2005 | |
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The president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology New Mexico Tech), Dr Daniel Lopez, and the head of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, Professor Malcolm Longair, formalised the collaboration between their two institutions to build the Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer, the world’s most ambitious optical telescope array. The Interferometer will be composed of several telescopes, spread out over an area larger than a football pitch, and optically linked together to form a single ‘synthetic aperture’ 400 metres in diameter. Its huge size yields images with much greater clarity than is available from any single telescope. The array will produce images 100 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope and, for the first time, enable scientists to watch the final moments of dying stars, study the formation of planets around other stars, and get close to the heart of active galaxies. |
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