Embattled Thirty Meter Telescope scores big win in Hawaii’s highest court

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Hawaii’s supreme court has ruled in favour of building the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop the mountain Mauna Kea. The decision removes the last legal hurdle preventing the US$1.4-billion project from resuming construction on Hawaii’s Big Island.

“This clears the way for the TMT to begin construction,” says Doug Simons, executive director of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, which is located on Mauna Kea. “So yeah, it’s a really big deal.”

For years, the next-generation astronomical observatory has been mired in public protests and legal challenges. Some Native Hawaiians say that building the mega-telescope would further desecrate a sacred mountain that is already home to multiple observatories. In April 2015, protesters blocked the road to Mauna Kea’s summit as construction of the TMT was set to begin. That December, the state supreme court revoked the project’s construction permit, saying that the state government had granted it before opponents of the telescope could have their full say.

Thirty Meter Telescope

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is a proposed astronomical observatory with an extremely large telescope (ELT) that has become the source of controversy over its planned location on Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii in the US state of Hawaii. Construction of the TMT on land which is sacred to Native Hawaiian culture and religion[5] attracted press coverage[6] after October 2014, when construction was temporarily halted due to protests. While construction of the telescope was set to resume on April 2 and later on June 24, 2015, it was blocked by further protests each time.[7] The Board of Land and Natural Resources approved the TMT project,[8][9] but the State Supreme Court of Hawaii invalidated the building permits in December 2015, ruling that the board had not followed due process. Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain is the alternative site if construction cannot go forward in Hawaii.[10][11][12] The TMT would become the last area on Mauna Kea on which any telescope will ever be built.[13]



Adaptive Optics

Integral to the observatory is a Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) system. This MCAO system will measure atmospheric turbulence by observing a combination of natural (real) stars and artificial laser guide stars. Based on these measurements, a pair of deformable mirrors will be adjusted many times per second to correct optical wave-front distortions caused by the intervening turbulence.[70]

This system will produce diffraction-limited images over a 30-arc-second diameter field-of-view, which means that the core of the point spread function will have a size of 0.015 arc-second at a wavelength of 2.2 micrometers, almost ten times better than the Hubble Space Telescope.