Posted 8/05/2004 05:38:00 PM by Douglas

UT and A&M are going to build the world's largest telescope?

Two Texas universities, bolstered by a $1.25 million gift from Houston businessman George Mitchell, have joined a project that hopes to build the world's largest telescope.

If successful, the $400 million Giant Magellan Telescope is expected to collect 70 times more light than NASA's extraordinarily successful Hubble Space Telescope and could produce images that are 10 times sharper, allowing Earth-based observers to view the earliest formation of planets and galaxies.

It could be placed atop the Andes Mountains in Chile as early as 2015.

Why does this sound like a bad idea? UT and A&M collaborating on a telescope? You know they're going to be fighting over the eyepiece all the dang time. Where is the money coming from?

Mitchell, who made his fortunes in energy and real estate development, donated the money to his alma mater, Texas A&M University. The University of Texas at Austin, which runs the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, has promised to match the funds over the next two years.

A&M needed a rich donor: UT just had it 'laying around' somewhere. Go figure.