The TMT Early-Career Initiative (TECI) is an innovative, evolving program designed to support inclusion in the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) International Observatory (TIO) by engaging graduate students and postdocs in TIO projects, and preparing them with skills required to contribute to the project and advance in their careers. TECI has an annual cycle that begins with a workshop that includes project management, instrument design, and teamwork sessions, and engages participants in projects that could lead to visits and new collaborations. Project teams are led by the participants themselves, who consult with a member of the relevant technical team or project staff. In this paper we describe the components of TECI, our approach to designing it, and outcomes from our early piloting in 2016-17, as well as our first full program in 2018-19.
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is an extremely large optical-infrared telescope with diffraction-limited performance that will shape the landscape of astronomy for the next 50 years from its vantage point in the northern hemisphere. The TMT International Observatory, LLC is formed as a public-private-international partnership to fund and manage the design, development, construction and operation of the observatory. The partnership represents a truly global collaboration of the scientific, instrumentation and industrial communities of India, Canada, China, Japan and the USA. This paper will describe the latest status on telescope site preparation, communications and management, requirements flow down and interface definition, telescope and instrument performance, hardware and software development, education and public outreach.
M3 is a full-discipline architecture, engineering and construction management firm hired by TMT International Observatory to design and manage the construction of several aspects of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). The TMT is a next-generation extremely large telescope that is approaching its start of construction. While the TMT continues to consider construction at the originally proposed site on Maunakea, Hawaii, the project is ensuring viability while addressing challenges at its baseline site through establishing an alternate design for facilities at Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (ORM) on the island of La Palma, Spain. With both locations actively being developed in parallel and with a similar scheduled start of construction in mind, this paper offers an overview and insight into how and why TMT and M3 established a practical design for the Canary Islands, how it differs from the design at Maunakea, and discusses the legal processes followed to establish access to a suitable site in La Palma.
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Project will design and build a thirty-meter diameter telescope for research in
astronomy at optical and infrared wavelengths. TMT is a partnership between the University of California, Caltech, and
the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA). The $80 million TMT design and
development phase is fully funded and Preliminary Design is in progress. An additional $300 million has been pledged
towards early TMT construction which will commence in 2009. We include a high level description of the design of the
telescope and its planned adaptive optics and science instrumentation. The schedule of key milestones for completing
the design and construction is summarized.
Previous studies of the scaling of the costs of ground based optical observatories suggest that total costs scale as the
primary mirror diameter to a power between 1.7 and 3.0. It has been suggested that observatory costs may scale as
primary mirror diameter squared reflecting the dependence on thinner mirrors in the current generation of observatory
design. Upon completing the detailed cost estimate in support of the Preliminary Design for the Thirty Meter Telescope,
an in depth study was undertaken to understand the sensitivity of the estimate to mirror diameter and thickness in
addition to other leading parameters of TMT such as segmentation, primary focal ratio, and enclosure diameter. Based
upon this analysis, and expressing the costs scaled solely to the mirror diameter, our analysis suggests that the TMT
design scales effectively as the diameter to the power 1.2. We will describe the assumptions used to guide this study, the
methods used to build the cost model, and the general results of the model.
KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Adaptive optics, Observatories, Optical instrument design, Telecommunications, Associative arrays, Control systems design, Systems engineering, Databases, Thirty Meter Telescope
Estimates of the cost to construct the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) have progressed from rough order parametric analyses at the early Reference Design stage to detailed bottom up estimating at the lowest levels of the TMT Work Breakdown Structure during the Conceptual and Preliminary Design phases. This detailed estimating process is guided by uniform estimating procedures and a contingency estimating methodology that assesses technical, cost and schedule risks for each item that is estimated. Details of the cost estimating techniques, their implementation, uses of the results, and planned next steps will be described.
TMT is a big science project and its scale is greater than previous ground-based optical/infrared telescope projects. This
paper will describe the ideal "linear" project and how the TMT project departs from that ideal. The paper will describe
the needed adaptations to successfully manage real world complexities. The progression from science requirements to a
reference design, the development of a product-oriented Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and an organization that
parallels the WBS, the implementation of system engineering, requirements definition and the progression through
Conceptual Design to Preliminary Design will be summarized. The development of a detailed cost estimate structured by
the WBS, and the methodology of risk analysis to estimate contingency fund requirements will be summarized.
Designing the project schedule defines the construction plan and, together with the cost model, provides the basis for
executing the project guided by an earned value performance measurement system.
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Project will design and build a thirty-meter diameter telescope for research in
astronomy at optical and infrared wavelengths. TMT is a partnership between the University of California, Caltech,
Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA), and the Association of Universities for
Research in Astronomy (AURA). The TMT design and development phase is funded and work is underway. We
include a high level description of the design of the telescope and its planned adaptive optics and science
instrumentation. The organizational structure of the project is summarized along with the schedule of key milestones in
the design. We are carrying out key conceptual and cost reviews in 2006 and will be prepared to begin construction in
2009, with first light in 2015.
LIGO construction has been completed. The three interferometers at the two LIGO observatory sites (Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington) have been operated successfully as power-recycled Michelson interferometers with Fabry-Perot arm cavities. Commissioning of the interferometers has progressed to operating them simultaneously in this final optical configuration. The initial coincidence operation between the observatory sites has provided a full test of the detector hardware and software subsystems, and full operation of the data acquisition and data analysis systems. The LIGO Laboratory and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration are working together to exploit the early series of interleaved engineering and science runs to commission the detector and data systems, to provide a detailed characterization of the detector and to produce the first scientific results from LIGO. The operation of LIGO is also coordinated with operation of the GEO 600 detector and the ALLEGRO resonant mass detector. The status of this early operation and data study will be presented.
The LIGO project has completed the installation of large fused silica optical components in the vacuum systems of its observatories. Commissioning work on the Hanford 2 km interferometer has determined an upper limit to the optics losses, allowing comparison with design and pre-installation testing. Planning and development of sapphire optics for the next generation, advanced LIGO detector is now underway, including polishability, optical homogeneity, absorption, and birefringence. The advanced optics development also includes research aimed at lowering coating loss.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.