Giant telescope takes its first look up to the heavens

TENERIFE, Canary Islands – One of the world’s largest and most powerful telescopes opened its shutters, turned its 34-foot-wide mirror toward the skies and captured its first light at a mountaintop on one of Spain’s Canary Islands on Saturday.

The $179 million Great Canary Telescope, designed to take advantage of pristine, clear skies at the Roque de los Muchachos observatory atop the Atlantic island of La Palma, should be fully operational by May 2008.

On a crystal-clear night, Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe keyed in the computer codes that brought the observatory’s complex machinery to life.

Slowly, 12 of the telescope’s eventual 36 mirrors aimed at a twin star close to the Earth’s northern axis, near the North Star. Twelve images merged into one as the telescope focused.

The telescope “will be able to reach the weakest and most distant celestial objects of the universe,” the Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute said.

Planning for the telescope began as long ago as 1987, when the nearby William Herschel telescope, with a mirror 13.8 feet in diameter, became operational. Construction work took seven years and involved more than 1,000 people from nearly 100 companies.

“With this (telescope), it will possible to capture the birth of new stars, to study more profoundly the characteristics of black holes or to decipher the chemical components generated by the Big Bang,” the institute said.

The GCT is among the world’s largest telescopes, such as the newly opened Southern African Large Telescope, which has a 36-foot mirror and has been described as the southern hemisphere’s largest single optical telescope, and the Hobby-Eberly telescope on Mount Fowlkes, Texas, which also has a 36-foot mirror.

The Canary institute is considered one of the world’s centers of excellence in astrophysics owing to the special geographical situation of the islands, off the northwest coast of Africa, which allows an unusually transparent view of the skies.