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Construction of World's Largest Telescope Finally Underway in Chile
mpicpp (3454017) writes with this update about a long-awaited project, the European Extremely Large Telescope: The partial demolition of Cerro Armazones, a mountain in northern Chile's Antofagasta region, marked the start of constructing the world's largest and most powerful telescope, an instrument capable of capturing 14 times more light than existing telescopes. At 2:00 p.m. Thursday, the blasting of Cerro Armazones, 3,060 meters (11,800 feet) high, removed from the peak between 25 and 30 meters (80 and 100 feet) of its height in order to create a plain some 200 meters (655 feet) long, on which to mount the European Extremely Large Telescope, or E-ELT, a project of the European Southern Observatory. On this site will be built a structure 60 meters (200 feet) high and 80 meters (260 feet) in diameter, with mirrors of 39.3 meters (129 feet) which in 10 years will begin to explore the origins of the universe. The telescope will shed light on the 'dark ages' of the universe, when the Milky Way was only 500,000 years old, and thanks to its enormous size it could also contribute to finding extraterrestrial life by detecting whether exoplanets have oxygen in their atmospheres.
First, clear the mountain with a Big Fucking Explosion. Then assemble the Huge Ass Mirrors.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Based on how long most of these big telescope projects end up taking, I'd expect late 2020s for it to become usable. We'll see.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Annnnndddd wrong . Without regard to the annoying pedantry involved in conflating a radio telescope with an optical telescope, of which this article is obviously about, it is in fact the Arecibo radio-telescope which is the largest radio telescope, neither of which has jack to do with this article.
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
World's largest fully-steerable single-dish telescope - the Arecibo Observatory is larger still at a diameter of 300m! (Impressive Arecibo exploration video here. The thing's sodding enormous.)
I went looking for the largest diameter multi-dish radio telescope. It looks like the biggest terrestrial 'telescope' is the Global VLBI system created by combining the European VLBI Network with the US Very Long Baseline Array - it's like some massive team of superheroes combining to save the Earth from some terrible secret of space. Or whatever. Apparently they can also add space-based telescopes when that just isn't enough. Which, quite frankly, is showing off...
My thoughts when seeing one of the beautiful, 10m diameter Keck optical telescopes up close a few years ago? I've had full control of a telescope bigger than that.
Radio Astronomers: Compensating For Something.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
The Extremely Large Telescope is a compromise - what they really wanted was the 100m-diameter Overwhelmingly Large Telescope.
Their naming committees are either entirely humourless or gloriously taking the piss.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
World's largest fully-steerable single-dish telescope - the Arecibo Observatory is larger still at a diameter of 300m! (Impressive Arecibo exploration video here.
I guess "fully steerable" means "within ~20 of zenith" to you. But that's not what the rest of the world considers "fully steerable".
Not As Large As Your Mom But Still Large Telescope.
*Whoosh* - The sound of a metaphor going over your head.
So put on a tin foil cap to protect yourself from the big bad brain imaging satellite. I suggest making it cone shaped.