Construction of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) - the world’s biggest optical/near-infrared telescope - is underway in Chile’s Atacama desert.
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The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released pictures yesterday of its newest telescope to be built at Cerro Armazones where Cerro Armazones Observatory - jointly run by a Chilean and German university - is already located.
Being built at 3,000 meters above sea level in Chile’s northern desert, the driest in the world, the main mirror alone of the ELT will span some 39 meters, leading engineers and astrophysicists to call it "the world’s biggest eye on the sky."
So far the construction company building the mammoth telescope, ACe Consortium, has cast a circular hole 55 meters in diameter to hold the celestial observer. By the time they are expected to be done in 2024, the entire machine will be 80 meters high.
The ESO said in a statement that the construction of the ELT in a remote, high-altitude desert: "is not easy, but the rewards will be great; this site is high, dry, and removed from light pollution. It will provide truly excellent seeing conditions, allowing astronomers to probe the mysteries of the cosmos as never before."
This isn’t the ESO’s first Atacama telescope. Its "flagship observatory" - the Very Large Telescope - is located some 22 kilometers from the ELT construction site, allowing for an easy half hour drive between the two.