A new telescope has received the green-light for construction atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA) is one of the groups leading the way towards completing the project.

The Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT), when it begins operations in 2021, will be the largest optical telescope in the world, surpassing the power of any optical telescope built so far, and not just with its size. With its 30-m wide, 492-segment primary mirror, the telescope will use a system of 'adaptive optics' to produce images of our universe that will be better than even those of the space telescopes that orbit the planet.

One of the difficulties faced by astronomers using ground-based telescopes is our atmosphere. When you look up into the night sky and see the stars twinkling, that twinkle is due to the influence of the atmosphere. If you were up in space, those same twinkling stars would instead be constant points of light. This is why the Hubble telescope was put into orbit, so that it could escape the limitations imposed by the atmosphere and produce the most detailed

However, with 'adaptive optics' and the segmented mirror, the TMT will project a laser into the sky, creating a 'false star', and it will gauge the conditions in the atmosphere based on how that 'false star' looks. Adjusting the positions of the mirror segments so that the 'false star' comes into sharp focus, those adjustments will then bring the universe into sharp focus, as if the atmosphere wasn't there. Adaptive optics is currently being used by the Very Large Telescope, at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

The Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy is joining up with an international consortium that includes the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Department of Science and Technology of India.

Geek out with the latest in science and weather.

Follow @ygeekquinox on Twitter!