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demonstration
In 1984, a technical demonstration of the alignment and control system was held at LBL using a full-size mirror segment and a prototype sensor and actuator. The demonstration proved that the system worked. -
ground braking
ground was broken to begin construction on a cinder cone atop an inactive volcano called Mauna Kea, widely acknowledged as the best site on the face of the Earth for a telescope. At an elevation of 13,796 feet, the peak of Mauna Kea is above 40 percent of the atmosphere. The thin air up there is dry, usually cloudless, and far removed from the polluting chemicals and urban lights that hamper other observatories. Mauna Kea is also surrounded by a thermal blanket, the Pacific Ocean, which greatly -
Putting it together
The team received a donation from the William M. Keck Foundation, and started work. They would build a telescope that had a single mirror made up of 36 small, thin mirror pieces, called segments. These segments would each be 6 feet (1.8 meters) in diameter, hexagon-shaped, and linked together in a grid the size of a tennis court. Computers would keep all the mirrors lined up. Together, they would weigh only about as much as the 200-inch mirror, but be four times its size. -
Where?
The team built two similar telescopes on top of the dormant volcano Mauna Kea in Hawaii. located near the 4,200-metre (13,800-foot) summit of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on north-central Hawaii Island, Hawaii, U.S. Keck’s twin 10-metre (394-inch) telescopes, housed in separate domes, constitute the largest optical telescope system of the burgeoning multi-observatory science reserve located on Mauna Kea. -
getting started
In 1985, Howard B. Keck of the W. M. Keck Foundation gave $70 million to fund the design and construction of the Keck I Telescope. The key advance that allowed the construction of the Keck's large telescopes was the ability to operate smaller mirror segments as a single, contiguous mirror. In the case of the Keck each of the primary mirrors is composed of 36 hexagonal segments that work together as a single unit. -
First telescope
The first was completed in 1990. the W. M. Keck Foundation gave $70 million to fund the design and construction of the Keck I Telescope. a 40 watt laser was installed on Keck I. -
keck1 and keck 2
Keck I was fully scheduled forastronomy in early 1994, and Keck II in October 1996. The two telescopes are separated by 85meters, with Keck II roughly northeast of Keck I. -
Second telescope
second telescope was finished in 1996. Keck II saw first light in October 1996. Infrared Imaging Spectrograph is a near-infrared spectrograph for use with the Keck II adaptive optics system. -
Mirrors
The 36 mirror segments that make up each individual mirror are connected to 168 electronic sensors and 108 motorized adjusting devices. The sensors on each segment constantly compare its height with the heights of the segments around it.If the heights don’t match — even by a difference a thousand times thinner than a human hair — the sensors send that information to a computer. bringing into view objects more than 10 billion light years away -
1997
In 1977, the University of California and the California Institute of Technology teamed up to build a reflecting telescope that would be twice as large as the Hale telescope at Palomar Mountain, which has a 200-inch mirror.The task wouldn’t be easy — or perhaps even possible. A mirror that large could cost as much as a billion dollars, and would be so heavy that it would be hard to keep it from collapsing under its own weight. double the size of the Hale Telescope -
upgrade
As of May 2002, the status of the upgrade is that all of the optics,mechanisms and the two science-grade CCDs have been installed. We have commissioned theblue side of the instrument and it is available for science.
Included:CDDs, Geometry, Spectral coverage, Image quality -
July 2002
In order to characterize the emission of Keck I, measurements were made in July of 2002 following completion of periodic primary mirror segment aluminum recoating. The July measurements also followed replacement of the gold-coated f/25 secondary mirror and the replacement of the LWS potassium bromide dewar window. Thus, background radiation from these three optics should have been at or nearly at their minimum. The mirror temperature was recorded at 277°K at the time of the measurements. -
Laser
In 2004, Keck Observatory deployed the first laser guide star adaptive optics system on a large telescope. The laser guide star AO now routinely produces images with greater crispness and detail than those resulting from the Hubble Space Telescope. -
observing
Kamuela, Hawaii—Today, UCLA astronomers using the W. M. Keck Observatory reported the discovery of a remarkable star that orbits the enormous black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy in a blistering 11-and-a-half years, the shortest known orbit of any star near this black hole. The star, known as S0-102. May help astronomers discover whether Albert Einstein was right in his fundamental prediction of how black holes warp space and time, said Andrea Ghez, leader of the discovery team.
