Twin Keck Telescopes

The W.M. Keck Observatory is home to the two largest optical-infrared telescopes in the world. The twin Keck telescopes are located on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii. Each telescope has a segmented mirror that measures 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter, collecting over 70 times more light than a 10-meter monolithic mirror. The Keck telescopes use adaptive optics to correct for atmospheric distortion, allowing them to produce images that are as sharp as those taken from space.

The Keck telescopes have made many important contributions to our understanding of the universe. They have been used to study the formation of stars and planets, the evolution of galaxies, and the nature of black holes. The Keck telescopes have also been used to search for exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than our Sun. Here are some of the key features of the Keck telescopes:

• Segmented mirror: The Keck telescopes' segmented mirrors are composed of 36 hexagonal segments. Each segment is made of a special glass called Pyrex, which is very strong and has a low coefficient of thermal expansion. The segments are carefully aligned to create a single, seamless mirror.
• Adaptive optics: Adaptive optics is a technology that uses a deformable mirror to correct for atmospheric distortion. The deformable mirror is constantly updated by a computer, which uses data from a wavefront sensor to measure the distortion of the light from the star being observed.
• Laser guide star: The Keck telescopes use a laser guide star to create an artificial reference point in the sky. The laser guide star is a beam of light that is projected into the sky and excites sodium atoms in the Earth's atmosphere. The laser guide star is used by the adaptive optics system to measure the distortion of the light from the star being observed.

Here are some of the scientific discoveries that have been made using the Keck telescopes:

• The discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star
• The discovery of the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune
• The discovery of the first galaxy cluster at a redshift of z = 6, which is about 90% of the way to the age of the universe
• The discovery of the first directly imaged black hole

The Keck telescopes are a vital part of our efforts to understand the universe. They are helping us to answer some of the most fundamental questions about the cosmos, such as how stars and planets form, how galaxies evolve, and what the nature of dark matter and dark energy is.