The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is to be designed and built by a consortium of American research institutions in Chile.
The ANU said the GMT is in the preliminary planning stage and is likely to be one of the first of a small number of next-generation, Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) due to come online in the next two decades.
The GMT will detect and study planets around other suns, probe the dark matter and dark energy that controls the expansion and development of the cosmos, and unlock the secrets of star and planet formation.
Other US institutions involved in the project include the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Arizona, the University of Michigan, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas A&M University.
ANU vice-chancellor Professor Ian Chubb said involvement in the project was an important initiative for the university.
"The Giant Magellan is one of several international projects ANU will be conducting with overseas partners to solve some of the biggest questions facing humankind," he said in a statement.
"We're pleased to be part of this visionary project, which captures the forward strategic plan for the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and that of the ANU more generally."
Giant mirror
The school is based at Mt Stromlo outside Canberra. Its director is Professor Penny Sackett, who signed the memorandum of understanding for the project in Texas at the weekend.
"Stromlo has always been at the forefront of astronomy and its instrumentation," she said. "This partnership is a giant step toward the astronomy of the next decade and will ensure that ANU and Australia remains at the cutting edge of scientific research into our universe."
The telescope's conceptual design anticipates a moving mass of
1,000 metric tonnes and a cylindrical enclosing dome towering 65 metres - about 18 storeys - high.
Based on a superb observing site in northern Chile, the telescope is expected to see first light in 2015 and come into routine operation one year later.
The first mirror of the huge assembly has already been cast in Tucson, Arizona, and is being prepared for polishing.
Over the next three years, the GMT partnership will engage in an intense, detailed design phase, in which contracts could flow to
Australia before building begins in 2010.
The primary mirror of the Giant Magellan Telescope will be composed of six segments, each 8.4 metres in diameter surrounding a seventh central mirror of the same size.
The total light gathering power will be nearly seven times that of the international Gemini telescopes, the largest telescopes to which Australian astronomers now have access.