The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has received a visit from Robert P. Kirshner, Executive Director of the Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory (TIO). During his stay at the IAC headquarters in La Laguna, he was welcomed by the center’s director, Valentín Martínez Pillet, and by the deputy director, Eva Villaver Sobrino, along with other members of the research institute. During his visit, he was able to learn firsthand about the institution’s scientific and technological capabilities and gave a colloquium titled The Thirty Meter Telescope and Science of the Future.
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is an international project that aims to build the largest optical and infrared telescope in the Northern Hemisphere. Inspired by the legacy of the Keck Telescopes and the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC)—currently the largest operating optical-infrared telescope in the world—the TMT is in an advanced stage of design and manufacturing of key components, such as the segments of its primary mirror and its support systems. The initial planned location for this facility is Hawaii, while the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, operated by the IAC, is the alternative site.
In his presentation, Kirshner highlighted that the TMT will be a telescope with unprecedented imaging capacity and sensitivity: “Thanks to its high-performance multi-conjugate adaptive optics, the TMT will achieve an angular resolution close to the physical diffraction limit of light: about 0.0055 arcseconds at 800 nm.”
A telescope like the TMT offers revolutionary capabilities for science, particularly astrophysics, by combining unprecedented light-collecting power with extraordinary angular resolution. This will make it possible to detect and characterize exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. Through high-precision spectroscopy, it will allow the study of their atmospheres, chemical composition, and habitability conditions. Likewise, the TMT will enable the observation of stellar populations in nearby galaxies with a capability that does not currently exist, to analyze their dynamics and chemical enrichment, and through imaging of extragalactic objects to probe the nature of dark matter and dark energy. It will thus establish itself as an essential tool to address the most fundamental questions in modern astrophysics. Kirshner added: “This capability, combined with its enormous aperture, will allow us to tackle a broad range of fundamental questions in astrophysics, from the detection of signs of life on exoplanets to the study of the physics of black holes, dark matter, and dark energy".
During his talk, Kirshner emphasized that “international cooperation is essential to making projects of this magnitude a reality, and the TMT is an example of that shared vision.”
