World's Largest Telescope Now One Step Closer to Reality

Next year will see construction work beginning on a road that will connect the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) site at Cerro Armazones with the rest of Chile. In addition, development work will begin on certain high-tech components that will go on the instrument.

At this time, constructing the telescope is expected to take about 10 to 11 years. When completed, it will be the largest optical and near-infrared observatory ever. Its primary mirror will have a diameter of 39.3 meters (128.93 feet).

The largest comparable observatory today, the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), features an arrangement of hexagonal mirrors as its primary viewer but, even so, it only has a diameter of 10 meters (around 33 feet).

Constructing a telescope as large as the E-ELT poses unique engineering and physical challenges, not to mention the costs involved. The only way for the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to handle the load is for it to stretch the construction process over more than a decade.

The good news is that funds are not going to be a problem, at least for 2012. The ESO Council has approved the organization's budget for next year, and the planned E-ELT developments are all supported.

Creating the road that will connect Cerro Armazones to other areas of Chile is the most important part. This will allow heavy trucks and construction equipment to be brought in when the actual construction begins. The facility will be located close to ESO's Paranal Observatory, at Cerro Paranal.

In addition, next year will also see work starting on the creation of the M4 adaptive optics mirror system, which is shaping up to be extremely challenging to build. However, the 124th meeting of the ESO Council did not have the authority to sanction the entire E-ELT project.

Full confirmation for the observatory is scheduled for a vote in mid-2012, but things are looking good thus far. The past few months saw important progress for the project, including the fact that the Chilean government agreed to donate the land necessary for the facility.

The E-ELT is expected to cost around 1.082 billion euros (adjusted for 2012), which is the equivalent of $1.44 billion. These figures were confirmed by an independent review conducted in October 2011.

“The E-ELT is starting to become reality. However, with a project of this size it is expected that approval of the extra expenditure will take time,” said Tim de Zeeuw, the director-general of ESO.

“Council at the same time recognizes that preparatory work must start now in order for the project to be ready for a full start of construction in 2012,” he added at the ESO Council meeting.