Princeton University Thunch Talk

The Thirty Meter Telescope is a top-ranked priority of the Astro 2020 Decadal Survey because its combination of very large aperture and adaptive optics opens up vast areas for unique observational work across a broad swath of frontier science ranging from exoplanets to the fundamental physics that underlies cosmic acceleration. In this talk, I will describe the telescope and its first-light instrumentation; illustrate some of the science this enables; place the TMT in the context of the US Extremely Large Telescope program and the European-ELT, HST and JWST; and summarize the present status of the design, production. and funding of the TMT by philanthropy, the partners (Caltech and the University of California, Canada, India and Japan), and the US National Science Foundation. I will also describe our ongoing efforts in Hawaii to create a new model of community astronomy for this and other large scientific infrastructure projects.