The Greenland Telescope is a

radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the radio frequency ...

that is currently installed and operating at the Thule Air Base in north-western Greenland. It will later be deployed at the Summit Station research camp, located at the highest point of the

Greenland ice sheet The Greenland ice sheet ( da, Grønlands indlandsis, kl, Sermersuaq) is a vast body of ice covering , roughly near 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is sometimes referred to as an ice cap, or under the term ''inland ice'', or its Danish equiva ...

at an altitude of 3,210 meters (10,530 feet). The telescope is an international collaboration between: * The Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics ''( Taiwan)'' (project leaders) * The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian ''( United States)'' * The National Radio Astronomy Observatory ''( United States)'' * The Haystack Observatory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ''( United States)'' In 2011 the

U.S. National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

gave the

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) is a research institute of the Smithsonian Institution, concentrating on astrophysical studies including galactic and extragalactic astronomy, cosmology, solar, earth and planetary sciences, the ...

a 12-meter radio antenna that had been used as a prototype for the ALMA project in Chile. The antenna was to be deployed in Greenland. Deploying the telescope in the middle of Greenland is ideal for detecting certain radio frequencies. The telescope will be used to study the

event horizons In astrophysics, an event horizon is a boundary beyond which events cannot affect an observer. Wolfgang Rindler coined the term in the 1950s. In 1784, John Michell proposed that gravity can be strong enough in the vicinity of massive compact obj ...

black holes A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can def ...

and to test how general relativity behaves in environments with extreme gravity. The Greenland Telescope will become part of the global network of telescopes that makes up the Event Horizon Telescope that will study supermassive black holes and explore the origin of the

relativistic jet An astrophysical jet is an astronomical phenomenon where outflows of ionised matter are emitted as an extended beam along the axis of rotation. When this greatly accelerated matter in the beam approaches the speed of light, astrophysical jets bec ...

in the active galaxy Messier 87.

Progress and current status

The_Greenland_Telescope_in_2017_November

Between 2013 and 2015, the Taiwanese Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics modified the telescope so that it would better work in the cold environment of the Arctic. The telescope was shipped to Greenland in July 2016 and re-assembled in July 2017 at the Thule Air Base in north-western Greenland. The telescope took its first image on 25th of December 2017. The telescope will be deployed at the Summit Station research camp, located at the highest point of the

References

Additional sources

*Hirashita, Hiroyuki; Koch, Patrick M.; Matsushita, Satoki; Takakuwa, Shigehisa; Nakamura, Masanori; Asada, Keiichi; Liu, Hauyu Baobab; Urata, Yuji; Wang, Ming-Jye; Wang, Wei-Hao; Takahashi, Satoko; Tang, Ya-Wen; Chang, Hsian-Hong; Huang, Kuiyun; Morata, Oscar; Otsuka, Masaaki; Lin, Kai-Yang; Tsai, An-Li; Lin, Yen-Ting; Srinivasan, Sundar; Martin-Cocher, Pierre; Pu, Hung-Yi; Kemper, Francisca; Patel, Nimesh; Grimes, Paul; Huang, Yau-De; Han, Chih-Chiang; Huang, Yen-Ru; Nishioka, Hiroaki; Lin, Lupin Chun-Che; Zhang, Qizhou; Keto, Eric; Burgos, Roberto; Chen, Ming-Tang; Inoue, Makoto; Ho, Paul T. P.. "First-generation science cases for ground-based terahertz telescopes". ''Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan'', 2016: Volume 68, Issue 1, id.R1 pp. , do
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* Th
''M87 Workshop'': Towards the 100th Anniversary of the Discovery of Cosmic Jets
* {{cite journal, last1=Urata, first1=Yuji, last2=Huang, first2=Kuiyun, last3=Asada, first3=Keiichi, last4=Hirashita, first4=Hiroyuki, last5=Inoue, first5=Makoto, last6=Ho, first6=Paul T. P., title=A New Era of Submillimeter GRB Afterglow Follow-Ups with the Greenland Telescope, journal=Advances in Astronomy, date=2015, volume=2015, pages=165030, doi=10.1155/2015/165030, arxiv=1503.07594, bibcode=2015AdAst2015E..12U, doi-access=free

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