Tucson Region

Powerful scope holds promise of rare discoveries

If it is not consumed by fire, the University of Arizona's giant telescope atop Mount Graham will someday capture what others have not been able to: a view of a planet orbiting another star. The $110 million Large Binocular Telescope could help us figure out what planets surrounding stars other than our sun are up to, says the project's director, John Hill. It is just one of three telescopes on Mount Graham; the first of its two 28-foot-wide mirrors was installed last spring. The second mirror is still on a polishing machine, Hill said. "I spent the last 18 years of my life building those telescopes," Hill said. "It'd be depressing to lose them." When it's done, the 162-foot-tall telescope will be the most powerful observatory in the world - 10 times as powerful as the orbiting Hubble Telescope and able to collect light from the sky one billion times farther away than what the naked eye can see, Hill said. Astronomers are already lining up for use-time on the observatory. "Every three astronomers you meet will have five projects they want to use those scopes on," he said. One such project - the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer- will be used to cancel the light from distant stars so astronomers can better see the natural light of their individual planets, Hill said. But it will also be used to study star formations, dust clouds and just about anything else astronomers want to know. Also on Mount Graham are the Vatican Telescope, a 1.8-meter optical telescope used for the direct imaging of nearby galaxies and star clusters, and the Sub-Millimeter Telescope, a radio telescope used to look through the dust in the universe and to study new star formations. The total cost of the complex is more than $200 million, said Buddy Powell, director of Mount Graham International Observatory. The observatory so far isn't in danger, he said. To reduce the fire danger, the UA removed 850 dead trees 100 feet out from its buildings. It installed double-paned windows and screens on the telescopes' air intakes to defend against embers. The Forest Service moved in a large fire crew to remove flammable materials around the buildings and installed three water tanks to feed water lines. The firelines the agency installed north of the observatory continued to hold late Sunday afternoon, Powell said. "Things are looking better today than they were yesterday," he said.