NEWS FROM CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON
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For Immediate Release, February 12, 1996
Call:
* Carnegie news office at 202-939-1121 (Tina McDowell)
* UMichigan news office at 313-747-1844 (Sally Pobojewski)
* MIT news office at 617-253-1682 (Bob Di Iorio)
* UArizona news office at 520-626-4121 (Lori Stiles)
* Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics news office 617-495-7461
(Jim Cornell or Caroline Lupfer)
* Carnegie Observatories (Augustus Oemler, director, at 818-304-0260 or
818-577-1122)
MAGELLAN TO BUILD TWO LARGE TELESCOPES
--MICHIGAN AND MIT JOIN PROJECT--
Carnegie Institution president Maxine Singer today announced that two new members--the University of Michigan and Massachusetts Institute of Technology--have joined the Magellan project. In welcoming Michigan and MIT, Singer explained that the two new members now give the project the needed resources to assure completion of two 6.5-meter telescopes at Las Campanas, Chile. "Magellan is now officially a two-telescope project," she confirmed.
In signing separate memoranda of understanding, Michigan and MIT now join the three earlier Magellan consortium members--University of Arizona, Harvard University, and Carnegie Institution of Washington. Carnegie is the consortium's lead partner and the owner of the Las Campanas Observatory.
Augustus Oemler, the director of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution, said, "We anticipate many decades of discoveries at the frontiers of astronomy using Magellan's superb facilities. We are also looking forward to a very pleasant and fruitful collaboration with our colleagues at the other Magellan institutions in scientific research and the development of new instrumentation."
ABOUT MAGELLAN AND LAS CAMPANAS
Site preparation for both Magellan telescopes has been completed and foundations have been laid atop the Manqui ridge on Las Campanas. Structural steel construction of the Magellan 1 enclosure and auxiliary and control buildings is reaching advanced stages; major components of the telescope mount and mirror cell are being manufactured at L & F Industries, Huntington Park, California, and installation will be completed in Chile in 1997. The primary mirror for Magellan 1 was cast at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, University of Arizona, and is ready for grinding and polishing. Inspection of the mirror blank after its removal from its oven in early 1995 revealed it to be of excellent quality. The Magellan 1 primary mirror is scheduled to be installed in mid-1998. The cost of the two telescopes is estimated at approximately $65-70 million.
The governing body of the Magellan Consortium is the Magellan Council, made up of astronomers appointed by the member institutions in approximate proportion to their shares in the project. Carnegie Institution will preserve at least 50% participation, and its director of the Las Campanas Observatory, who reports to the director of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution, will manage the day-to-day operations of the Magellan facilities. Consistent with existing agreements for operation of Las Campanas, ten percent of future observing time will be available to astronomers at Chilean universities free of charge.
Las Campanas has proven an absolutely superior observing site. The observatory is situated at elevation 2400 meters, far from city lights, and is favored by extraordinarily stable air. The southern latitude facilitates investigation of objects near the center of our Galaxy, and makes possible year-round observation of the extraordinarily useful Magellanic Clouds.
THE NEW MAGELLAN PARTNERS
The University of Michigan has agreed to fund 10% of the capital and operating costs of the two-telescope project, and in turn to receive 10% of the observing time. The University has operated major astronomical facilities since the construction of its first observatory in 1854. At present, the University of Michigan and MIT, together with Dartmouth College, operate two smaller optical telescopes, the W. A. Hiltner telescope and the McGraw-Hill telescope at the Michigan-Dartmouth-MIT observatory on Kitt Peak Mountain in southern Arizona. ("Al" Hiltner, after a distinguished career leading the Department of Astronomy at Michigan, in 1987 became the initial project manager of Project Magellan. He died in 1991.) The Astronomy Department is part of the College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts; the Dean of the College is Edie Goldenberg. Michigan's entry has been negotiated principally by professor of astronomy Douglas Richstone.
MIT's commitment is to 8-10% of the two-telescope project. The Institute entered astronomy soon after World War II, helping to create the physics-based and technology- intensive fields of x-ray and radio astronomy. The later program in ground-based optical astronomy is focused on topics in cosmology, including fundamental questions on the size of the universe and the large-scale distribution of matter. MIT also has active programs in astrophysics theory and solar system astronomy, both from the ground and from space, the development of advanced sensors, optics, and computation. About fifty astrophysics graduate students provide enthusiasm and fresh ideas. MIT's participants in Magellan include members of the Department of Physics and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, coordinated by physics professor Claude R. Canizares, director of the Center for Space Research.
Astronomers of Michigan and MIT have often collaborated on scientific projects with one another and with astronomers of the other Magellan partners.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MAGELLAN IN ASTRONOMY
Society has been enthralled in recent months by spectacular images and discoveries coming from the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. In virtually every case, the Hubble observations depended on extensive and painstaking observation and analysis employing today's large ground telescopes; repeatedly, the complementary nature of spaceborne and ground-based astronomy has been illustrated. It is safe to say that the new large ground telescopes, like the twin Magellans, featuring huge light- collecting surfaces and frequent improvements in auxiliary instruments, will bring exploration and understanding beyond anything that can remotely be foreseen.
There is great interest today, for example, in pinning down the celestial distance scale--i.e., in ascertaining the size and age of the universe. Every few months, the press carries results from the several groups engaged in the quest. Two Carnegie investigators, Wendy Freedman and Allan Sandage, are at the forefront in the quest. Behind Freedman's leadership of a Hubble Telescope Key Project stands years of effort by her and a few colleagues in calibrating the standard distance indicator to nearby galaxies--the Cepheid scale--to a great extent by means of observations of Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds using the present telescopes at Las Campanas. Sandage's investigations into the question include long years of leadership from extensive observations at the major ground telescopes and now include important newer observations from the Hubble. Sandage and Freedman remain deeply enmeshed in the topic. The huge Magellan telescopes will bring vastly improved discrimination and sensitivity to this kind of forefront work--i.e., opportunities for breakthroughs in this and in many other exciting intellectual questions facing humankind.
In leading the Magellan project, Carnegie Institution brings a powerful tradition in astronomy. The Institution's early role, "central in the expansion of American astronomy," is currently noted in Physics Today (January 1996), for example. Carnegie's long history in developing large-aperture telescopes includes the building of the Mount Wilson, California, telescopes and, in partnership with Caltech, the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar. The Mount Wilson telescopes made possible the leadership of Edwin Hubble, who showed that the universe extended beyond the bounds of our Milky Way and discovered that that universe was expanding. Hubble, for whom the Hubble Telescope is named, spent his entire career as a Carnegie astronomer.
Carnegie Institution of Washington was founded in 1902 as Andrew Carnegie's institution for discovery. It now operates five research centers: the Department of Embryology in Baltimore, the Department of Plant Biology at Stanford, California, the Geophysical Laboratory and Department of Terrestrial Magnetism co-located in Washington, D.C., and the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California and Las Campanas, Chile.
The president of Carnegie Institution is the biologist Maxine Singer. Holding the Crawford H. Greenewalt chair as director of the Observatories is Augustus Oemler, Jr., who succeeded Leonard Searle on February 1, 1996; the director at Las Campanas is Miguel Roth. The Magellan head is Carnegie astronomer Steve Shectman, and the project manager is Peter de Jonge.
The text of this release is available by clicking from the Carnegie home page at http://www.carnegieinstitution.org
