Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is to be built on the summit Mauna Kea in the Hawaii Islands. The project was originally named California Extremely Large Telescope in 1990’s but later changed name to TMT owing to various partner merging. The TMT is housed under TMT Observatory Corporation, which is the partnership of five countries (Canada, USA, Japan, India & China). The TMT will be larger than Japan’s Subaru Telescope, one of the world’s biggest, which is also housed on the summit of Mauna Kea. This world’s biggest Telescope when built will be 10 times powerful than Hubble Space Telescope.
The TMT will be used by astronomers to observe stars, galaxies in the universe and also to study the formation of stars. TMT will also provide as support to identify planets with atmosphere to support life outside our solar system.
TMT is to house three scientific instruments listed as follows
- Infrared Multi-object Spectrometer (IRMS)
- Wide Field Optical Spectrometer (WFOS)
- Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (IRIS)
Source – Tmt.org, Economic times.