The Magellan Telescopes are a pair of optical telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The two telescopes are named after the astronomer Walter Baade and the

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Landon T. Clay Landon T. Clay (born Landon Thomas Clay, 1926 – July 29, 2017) was an American businessman and founder of the Clay Mathematics Institute. He died on July 29, 2017 at his home in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Biography Clay graduated from Harvar ...

. First light for the telescopes was on September 15, 2000 for the Baade, and September 7, 2002 for the Clay. A consortium consisting of the Carnegie Institution for Science, University of Arizona, Harvard University, the University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology built and operate the twin telescopes. The telescopes were named after the sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is an

extremely large telescope The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is an astronomical observatory currently under construction. When completed, it is planned to be the world's largest optical/near-infrared extremely large telescope. Part of the European Southern Observator ...

under construction, as part of the US Extremely Large Telescope Program.

Current instruments on the Magellan Telescopes

Baade telescope: * Inamori Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph (IMACS) * FourStar * Folded port InfraRed Echellette (FIRE) * Magellan Echellete (MagE) Clay telescope: * Magellan Inamori Kyocera Echelle (MIKE) spectrograph * Low-Dispersion Survey Spectrograph-3 (LDSS-3) * Megacam imager * MagAO * Michigan/Magellan Fiber System (M2FS)

Magellan Planet Search Program

This program is a survey of stars searching for planets using the MIKE echelle spectrograph mounted on the 6.5 m Magellan II (Clay) telescope.

MagAO Adaptive Optics System

In 2013, Clay (Magellan II) was equipped with an adaptive secondary mirror called MagAO which allowed it to take the sharpest visible-light images to date, capable of resolving objects 0.02 arcseconds across—equivalent to a dime (1.8 cm) seen from away. MagAO was originally intended for the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), but the secondary mirror was damaged before it could be installed. The project leader Laird Close and his team were able to repair and repurpose the broken mirror for use on Magellan II. As built for the LBT, the original MagAO mirror had a diameter of . However, the edge of the mirror was broken. Technicians at Steward Observatory were able to cut the mirror to in diameter, thereby removing the broken edge.

Gallery

File:Magscope.jpg, Part of Las Campanas Observatory after snowfall, with the Magellan telescopes at the right. File:Magellan telescopes.jpg, Telescopes at night

References

External links