The U.S. House of Representatives have passed (JULY 2019) a bill to change the name of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST.) Instead of that explanatory yet cumbersome name, it will be named after American astronomer Vera Rubin. Rubin is well-known for her pioneering work in discovering dark matter.
SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory) Published on Nov 1, 2016 Ranked as the top ground-based national priority for the field for the current decade, LSST is currently under construction in Chile. The U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is leading the construction of the LSST camera – the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy. SLAC Professor Steven M. Kahn is the overall Director of the LSST project, and SLAC personnel are also participating in the data management. The National Science Foundation is the lead agency for construction of the LSST. Additional financial support comes from the Department of Energy and private funding raised by the LSST Corporation. To learn more, visit
By 2029, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in northern Chile will begin collecting its first light from the cosmos. As part of a new class of next-generation instruments known as “extremely large telescopes” (ELTs), the GMT will combine the power of sophisticated primary mirrors, flexible secondary mirrors, adaptive optics (AOs), and spectrometers to see further and with greater detail than any optical telescopes that came before.
Artist’s impression of the GMTs segmented mirror. Credit: GMTO
A GMT mirror segment being cast at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab. Credit: GMTO
GMT mirror 5 casting: This timelapse shows several stages of the mirror casting process, including creating the light-weighted mirror mold, loading nearly 20 tons of borosilicate glass into the mold, and the furnace spinning at five revolutions per minute during "high fire," heating the glass to 1,165 degrees Celsius (2,129 F) for approximately five hours until it liquefies into the mold. GMT mirror 5 is being fabricated at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona.
In this video from July 2019, during the morning of the solar eclipse.