{"id":91346,"date":"2019-05-27T10:03:27","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T17:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/the-astounding-engineering-behind-the-giant-magellan-telescope"},"modified":"2019-05-27T10:03:27","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T17:03:27","slug":"the-astounding-engineering-behind-the-giant-magellan-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/the-astounding-engineering-behind-the-giant-magellan-telescope","title":{"rendered":"The Astounding Engineering Behind the Giant Magellan Telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-astounding-engineering-behind-the-giant-magellan-telescope2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s easy to miss the mirror forge at the University of Arizona. While sizable, the Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory sits in the shadow of the university\u2019s much larger 56,000-seat football stadium. Even its most distinctive feature\u2014an octagonal concrete prominence emblazoned with the school\u2019s logo\u2014looks like an architectural feature for the arena next door. But it\u2019s that tower that houses some of the facility\u2019s most critical equipment.<\/p>\n<p>Inside the lab, a narrow, fluorescent-green staircase spirals up five floors to the tower\u2019s entrance. I\u2019m a few steps from the top when lab manager Stuart Weinberger asks, for the third time, whether I have removed everything from my pockets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGlasses, keys, pens. Anything that could fall and damage the mirror,\u201d he says. Weinberger has agreed to escort me to the top of the tower and onto a catwalk some 80 feet above a mirror 27.5 feet in diameter. A mirror that has already taken nearly six years\u2014and $20 million\u2014to make. \u201cMost people in the <em>lab<\/em> aren\u2019t even allowed up here,\u201d he says. That explains Weinberger\u2019s nervousness about the contents of my pockets (which are really, truly empty), and why he has tethered my camera to my wrist with a short line of paracord.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/the-astounding-engineering-behind-the-giant-magellan-telescope\/amp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\">Read more<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s easy to miss the mirror forge at the University of Arizona. While sizable, the Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory sits in the shadow of the university\u2019s much larger 56,000-seat football stadium. Even its most distinctive feature\u2014an octagonal concrete prominence emblazoned with the school\u2019s logo\u2014looks like an architectural feature for the arena next door. But [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,38,15,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-engineering","category-habitats","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}