Construction
Lowell Observatory and Discovery Communications formed a partnership to build the Discovery Channel Telescope in February 2003. A special-use permit for construction and operation of the telescope at the Happy Jack site was received from the United States Forest Service in November 2004 and improvement of an existing road to the site commenced immediately. The primary mirror blank was completed by Corning in late 2005. Construction of the 85-foot-tall (26 m), 62-foot-diameter (19 m) telescope enclosure and an auxiliary support building began in mid-September 2005. Final figuring and polishing of the mirror, which weighs about 6,700 lb (3,000 kg), was completed by the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences. This process took about three years. The mirror was delivered to the site in June 2010, subsequently aluminized, and mounted on the telescope in August 2011. The telescope saw first light in 2012 and it was fully operational that year. It was only expected to be a 4.2 meter, but it turned out 4.3 m (14 ft) could be used.
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Famous quotes containing the word construction:
“There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)