The Giant Magellan Telescope's power comes from combining a very large mirror baseline, described as roughly 80 feet, with the sensitivity that scale provides, letting it detect much fainter objects at much higher resolution than current facilities. The discussion contrasts this with James Webb, whose leap forward came from being a bigger space telescope that also works in infrared, but which the guest notes is still smaller than what the Giant Magellan Telescope will offer.
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17:48resolution is the big total baseline, so that's much larger. That's like 80 ft or something. >> Okay. >> And so, the combination of that means you're going to get much You're going to be able to see much much fainter things, and you're going to be able to get much much higher resolution. The combination is tremendous. And as we've seen like with James Webb, anytime you have kind of a new technology, in James In the case of James Webb, it's the fact that it's a big it's the first it's a bigger telescope in space, but also as you've talked about before, it's an infrared telescope. Right. >> And it's the infrared component that really, I think, combined Well, combined with the size that's made it important. >> Mhm. >> But, you know, the James Webb is smaller