The Coming Generation of Very Large Optical Telescopes
Astronomy is presently at a crossroads as the plans are being made to construct the largest optical telescopes ever. At present, the world's largest telescopes are about 10-m in diameter, but those of the coming generation will be 25 m to 39 m in diameter. In this presentation, I will describe why we build ever larger telescopes, and describe the three leading designs for this coming generation: the Giant Magellan Telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope, and the European Extremely Large Telescope. These facilities will plumb the depths of the universe as never before, and I'll describe how they may show exciting insights about supermassive black holes, the first stars and galaxies in the universe, and life on other worlds.
Dr. James Di Francesco is the Director, Optical Astronomy and the Director, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory at the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre in Victoria, BC. James comes from Ontario, and received his BSc in Astronomy and Physics at the University of Toronto in 1990 and his PhD in Astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin in 1997. He joined NRC in 2002 after two postdoctoral fellowships at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA and the University of California, Berkeley. For many years, James was involved in Canada’s participation in the Atacama Large Millimetre Array project in Chile, the largest such high-frequency radio observatory in the world, and now chairs its Board. James has been a Director at NRC since 2018. His research interests include observational studies of star and planet formation throughout the Galaxy.