page_title: Large Binocular Telescope
section_title: Mountain controversy
hierarchical_section_title: Large Binocular Telescope / Project / Mountain controversy
caption_attribution_description: English: The image represents the Large Binocular Telescope on the top of the Pinaleno Mountains range, part of the Madrean Sky Islands enclave mountains structure. It was photographed from the south of the mountains, somewhere south-west of Safford, Graham County, on the Arizona State Route 266. The spot is to the end of the route, closer to Willcox than to Safford.
context_page_description: The Large Binocular Telescope is an optical telescope for astronomy located on 10,700-foot Mount Graham, in the Pinaleno Mountains of southeastern Arizona, United States. It is a part of the Mount Graham International Observatory.
  When using both 8.4 m wide mirrors, with centres 14.4 m apart, the LBT has the same light-gathering ability as a 11.8 m wide single circular telescope and the resolution of a 22.8 m wide one.
  The LBT mirrors individually are the joint second-largest optical telescope in continental North America, next to the Hobby–Eberly Telescope in West Texas. It has the largest monolithic, or non-segmented, mirror in an optical telescope.
  Strehl ratios of 60–90% in the infrared H band and 95% in the infrared M band have been achieved by the LBT.
context_section_description: The choice of location sparked considerable local controversy, both from the San Carlos Apache Tribe, who view the mountain as sacred, and from environmentalists who contended that the observatory would cause the demise of an endangered subspecies of the American red squirrel, the Mount Graham red squirrel. Environmentalists and members of the tribe filed some forty lawsuits – eight of which ended up before a federal appeals court – but the project ultimately prevailed after an act of the United States Congress.
  The telescope and mountain observatory survived two major forest fires in thirteen years, the more recent in the summer of 2017. Likewise the squirrels continue to survive. Some experts now believe their numbers fluctuate dependent upon nut harvest without regard to the observatory.
caption: LBT perched on an Arizona mountain
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