The E-ELT: European Extremely Large Telescope
What you are looking at in the picture below is a representation of what is soon to be the European Extremely Large Telescope, which is to be ten times bigger than any other telescope on the earth's surface, as well as sensitive enough to be able to spot life outside our own solar system.
The location of this massive project is on the Cerro Armazones, a remote mountain in Chile. In order to prep the site for construction, the construction team will blast about 24m of rock and dirt off the top of the mountain in order to create a plateau. The reason for this location is the incredibly dry air, which reduces the obscurity of the pictures taken by the telescope due to water droplets in the air.
The main mirror of the telescope will be 39m in diameter, which is far too big to install it in one piece; therefore the mirror will be made up of 800 segmentswhich will each be 1,4m in diameter. Due to its size, the E-ELT will be able to collect light 10x faster than existing telescopes, which will resolve issues associated with the current telescopes not being sensitive enough to achieve what this monstrosity will...
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| A computer rendering of the E-ELT. |
The project is expected to take about 10 years to complete, after which astronomers will first target Earth-like exoplanets in their host star's habitable zones in search of the first glimpses of alien life. They will also observe some of the oldest stars and galaxies in the universe in order to study dark matter and dark energy.
If they actually pull this off, this will change the way we know the universe forever!
For more information, click on http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/e-elt/e-elt_fir/the link.
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