Spain at forefront of world's largest telescope
The largest telescope in the world will be operational on the Spanish island of La Palma in Gran Canaria by 2004, with some of its observation time possibly to be dedicated to European projects. International collaboration has been important in bringing the project to fruition and so far institutes from Mexico and Florida, USA have both had five per cent of the telescope's time dedicated to them, with Spain presently taking the rest. A final decision on the use of the rest of the telescope's time has yet to be made, but up to 30 per cent of it could be dedicated to other European countries. The telescope will be able to carry out research on stellar formations, planets around stars, and will be useful for galactic astronomy as well as stellar astronomy projects. It will also have an infrared capacity to view objects that may be submerged in clouds of gases. Further developments are planned once the telescope is operational. Signing of pre-agreements took place at the beginning of December between Grantecan, which is organising the project and the university of Florida, the institute of astronomy of the national autonomous university of Mexico (UNAM) and the Mexican Institute for astrophysics, optics and electronics. Both Mexico and the Florida have five per cent of the time dedicated to their projects, but Florida may increase its share to 10 per cent. 'Next year, we will be looking into the possible participation of other European countries in the use of this high capacity telescope. But even the 30 per cent available for other countries is not taken up by them, Spain will fund all the remaining free time for Spanish research,' said Pedro Alvarez, managing director of the Grantecan project.