Project Manager's Corner: One Astronomer's Story from the Tohoku Earthquake

TMT has become a global project with collaborators in the US, Canada, Japan, China and India. The globe shrinks as we work each day via air travel, email, and early morning and late evening video conferences across our partnership. But nothing brings us closer than the kind of traumatic event that is described below by one our colleagues who experienced the tragic March 11 earthquake in Japan. Toru Yamada provides a vivid and personal account of his experience. I've traveled to Japan three times since March 11 and it has been gratifying to see how much has recovered but sobering to realize how much remains. Toru's words below tell one astronomer's story:
more »

Feature: Transforming our Understanding of the Universe with the Infrared Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS)

The Infrared Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) is a key early light instrument for TMT. IRIS has an infrared camera that will exploit the best image quality available from TMT, and a versatile integral field unit spectrograph that will take spectra on both fine and coarse spatial scales. With the sharpest and most sensitive images ever taken in the near infrared, TMT and IRIS will open our eyes to the Universe in exciting new ways, exploring everything from dwarf planets at the orbit of Pluto to the most distant galaxies ever explored near the dawn of cosmic time. more »

Feature: TMT Science & Instrumentation Workshop 2011

More than a hundred scientists and engineers converged in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, on March 28–30, 2011, to explore new instrument and adaptive optics concepts and capabilities for TMT and their exciting scientific potential. This meeting marked an important milestone for the TMT project as scientists from all communities now forming the TMT partnership, (including its newest members China and India, came together for the first time to lay down the next steps in TMT's scientific mission. Input from this meeting will help the TMT Scientific Advisory Committee establish priorities for second-generation instrumentation capabilities. more »

Segments News Items

• TMT, University Leaders Meet with the Prime Minister of India
• TMT Hawaii Update
• AstroDay
• President Obama Meets U.S. Laureates of 2010 Kavli Prizes:
  TMT Project Scientist Among Those Honored

more »

Technology Corner: The Infrared Imaging Spectrograph: Sampling the Diffraction Limit of TMT

IRIS, on TMT, is designed to be the most sensitive astronomical instrument ever built. IRIS is one of the three "first light" instruments for TMT—but it will be the only instrument to operate at the diffraction limit of the telescope at first light. more »