USA and Mexico to take part in the world’s largest telescope
Contact Details
Mr Josè Manuel Abad Liòn
Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
+34922605182
jmabad@ll.iac.es
International participation in the GRAN TELESCOPIO CANARIAS (GTC) -the world’s largest telescope, to be operating in La Palma island, Spain, in 2004- has recently been formalised with the signing, some days ago, of pre-agreements involving the University of Florida, the Institute of Astronomy of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and -also from Mexico – the Institute for Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (INAOE). Each country will be participating at a 5% level, although the University of Florida will be seeking to increase its participation to 10% in the forthcoming year.
The agreements establishing partnership of these institutions with Spain in GTC have been articulated as comprehensive agreements on co-operation. A further fraction of observing time has been added to the already 5% observing time in virtue of the partnership. In return, a programme has been set up including grants for PhD students, postdoctoral contracts at the University of Florida as well as the UNAM and the INAOE in Mexico. Also envisaged is joint collaboration in instrumentation programmes and the exchange of engineering and technical staff. Furthermore, the agreement with Mexico includes the exchange of observing time on GTC for time on the LMT (Large Millimeter Telescope), a 50 metre millimetric antenna, which INAOE is constructing in collaboration with the University of Massachussetts at Amherst.
