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Largest does not always equate to being the best telescopes, and overall light gathering power of the optical system can be a poor measure of a telescope's performance. Space-based telescopes , such as the Hubble Space Telescope , take advantage of being above the Earth's atmosphere to reach higher resolution and greater light gathering through ...
The following is a list of largest single mount optical telescopes sorted by total objective diameter (aperture), including segmented and multi-mirror configurations. It is a historical list, with the instruments listed in chronological succession by objective size.
This list combines large or expensive reflecting telescopes from any era, as what constitutes famous reflector has changed over time. In 1900 a 1-meter reflector would be among the largest in the world, but by 2000, would be relatively common for professional observatories.
Completed in 1963, it was the world's largest single-aperture telescope for 53 years, surpassed in July 2016 by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China. Following two breaks in cables supporting the receiver platform in mid-2020, the NSF decommissioned the telescope.
The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is a ground-based, extremely large telescope currently under construction at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert.With a primary mirror diameter of 25.4 meters, it is expected to be the largest Gregorian telescope ever built, observing in optical and mid-infrared wavelengths (320–25,000 nm). [1]
The Gran Telescopio Canarias (GranTeCan or GTC) is a 10.4 m (410 in) reflecting telescope located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands, Spain. It is the world's largest single-aperture optical telescope. [1] Construction of the telescope took seven years and cost €130 million.
The Keck I telescope began science observations in May 1993, while first light for Keck II occurred on April 27, 1996. The Keck II telescope showing the segmented primary mirror. The key advance that allowed the construction of the Keck telescopes was the use of active optics to operate smaller mirror segments as a single, contiguous mirror. A ...
Astronomer George Ellery Hale, whose vision created Palomar Observatory, built the world's largest telescope four times in succession. [8] He published a 1928 article proposing what was to become the 200-inch Palomar reflector; it was an invitation to the American public to learn about how large telescopes could help answer questions relating to the fundamental nature of the universe.