14 DAY TRIAL // Officials with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announce that the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) construction project is about to begin, now that all necessary agreements have been signed with contractors. The most important meeting took place on Monday, December 9.
At the ceremony, Tim de Zeeuw, director-general at ESO, and a delegation of senior representatives from the Chilean company ICAFAL Ingeniería y Construcción S.A. signed an agreement for building a road to the top of the Cerro Armazones peak, for leveling the mountain, and for conducting a series of civil works at this location.
This step is critical for the E-ELT project, which is scheduled to begin construction in March 2014. Cerro Armazones (3,000 meters or 9,842 feet above sea level) is located around 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) away from the ESO Paranal Observatory, the home of the famous Very Large Telescope (VLT).
E-ELT will be the largest optical telescope in the world, and will feature a single, 39.3-meter (129-foot) mirror. Upon completion, in late 2016, the observatory will be about 3.7 times larger than the current record-holder, the 10.4-meter (34.1-foot) Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), in Spain.