A large mirror will be placed inside a hot furnace this weekend, as development of a future telescope that will collect more light than any other instrument before is well underway.
The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) mirror, which is the third of seven planned mirrors, stretches 27 feet across and will weigh 20 tons once complete according to SPACE.com.
The mirror's glass is capable of sustaining 2,140 degrees Fahrenheit.
"Astronomical discovery has always been paced by the power of available telescopes and imaging technology," said Peter Strittmatter, head of the Steward Observatory's astronomy department, in a press statement according to SPACE.com. "The GMT allows another major step forward in both sensitivity and image sharpness."
Once cast, the seven mirrors will be arranged to work as a single mirror 80 feet in diameter, allowing the GMT a resolving power that's 10 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope.
The telescope will cost $700 million, and will run in northern Chile by 2020 according to SPACE.com.
Astronomers will be able to use GMT to "detect and characterize" exoplanets, study black holes, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
The GMT won't be the largest telescope on Earth for long however.
In 2025, the planned Thirty Meter Telescope will be built and completed atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The TMT will be 98 feet across according to SPACE.com.
A bigger telescope is also being planned called the European Extremely Large Telescope. The project will hold the record for the largest Earth-constructed telescope with a main mirror that stretches 138 feet across.
GMT's first mirror has already been cast and polished, meanwhile the second has been cast but not completed as of press time. Mirror 1 was cast in 2005, and Mirror 2 was cast in early 2012. Mirror 4 is set to be cast in 2014.
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