Abstract

AURA has answered the call of the astronomy decadal review committee for creation of a 30-meter Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope by forming a New Initiatives Office (NIO). One of the NIO activities in the past year has been to develop a GSMT point design as a tool that serves several purposes, including: exploring the dependence of scientific performance on features of the telescope; serving as a test bed for development of analytical methods; and highlighting key technical challenges requiring development efforts. This paper describes the GSMT point design and discusses some of the optical fabrication challenges involved in building this size of telescope.

© 2002 Optical Society of America