The Discovery Channel Telescope
Forty miles southeast of Flagstaff, atop a cinder cone at a site known as Happy Jack, the 4.2 meter Discovery Channel Telescope is under construction. Developed by Lowell Observatory in partnership with Discovery Communications, Inc., the DCT will be operational in 2010. It will be a powerful tool for research areas including the search for Near Earth Objects (NEOs), extrasolar planets, and exploration of the newly discovered Kuiper Belt. It will also expand opportunities for public outreach and education in the exciting world of science and technology.
The DCT will look into a pristine Arizona sky from an elevation of nearly 7800'. This image is taken looking south and southwest from the site. A crescent Moon is visible over the distant Bradshaw Mountains.
You can be part of the DCT project by joining the Friends of Lowell Observatory. You'll keep up with all the progress via our quarterly newsletter, and your tax-deductible membership dues will help support the DCT and our many other programs. Join today!
John Hendricks, founder and CEO, Discovery Communications
All of us at Lowell Observatory are grateful for, and tremendously energized by, the $5 million pledge from Mr. and Mrs. John Hendricks and their family toward the completion of the Discovery Channel Telescope. “In recognition of this truly generous gift, the existing Planetary Research Center at Lowell Observatory will be renamed the Hendricks Center for Planetary Studies,” said Lowell Trustee William Lowell Putnam. Mr. Putnam also noted that, while the Observatory remains open to the possibility of an additional university or observatory partner in the project, such a partner is no longer essential to completion of the telescope by 2010.
The Discovery Channel Telescope will increase Arizona’s economic output by more than $576 million over its 50-year expected useful lifetime, according to a study by the Center for Business Outreach at Northern Arizona University.
The DCT Mirror at the UA College of Optical Sciences laboratory. Note the size of the technicians at left relative to the size of the mirror.
Lowell Observatory and the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences (OSC) have finalized a $3 million, three-year contract to complete the Discovery Channel Telescope primary mirror. The 4.3-meter-diameter (14 ft.), approximately 6,700-pound mirror is the heart of the DCT. UA optical scientists will polish and figure the mirror in an exacting, delicate process expected to take about three years. If the mirror were the size of the United States, all the imperfections would be polished down to less than one inch high.
“This is a great telescope and a project we’re very interested in,” said Martin J. Valente, director of OSC’s optical fabrication and engineering facility and UA’s principal investigator on the project. “It’s a great opportunity to apply our advanced processing and testing technology and also to show our students, from start to finish, what it takes to actually make a deliverable product."
