Man in God’s world

Astronomers in California have spent the past decade designing a revolutionary 10-metre telescope with four times the ‘seeing power’ of any functional scope on earth. They have now received the money­–70 million dollars needed to make the project a reality. It will be called the Keck Observatory, after the W M Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, who supplied the money. It should be completed by 1993 and will be set up on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea.

The telescope, designed by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley, will be so powerful that, according to Howard B Keck, chairman of the foundation, “It will permit one to see the light of a single candle from the distance of the moon.” The Keck telescope will enable astronomers to see objects 12 billion light years away. They will be able to investigate the nature of quasars and explore how galaxies and stars formed. Marvin L Goldberger president of Caltech says, “It should provide answers to the most challenging and basic ques­tions of the universe.” (Newsweek, January 14, 1985).