An ambitious European project aimed at building the largest telescope has received last necessary approvals. Final plans for mega-telescope named the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) have been approved by the board of the European Southern Observatory specialized forum (ESO). The giant telescope will not be located on the Old Continent, but in the distant Chile.

"Project approval is excellent news for the ESO. Now we can go forward with this grand project", says Tem de Zeeuw, Director General of ESO.

E-ELT telescope will have a mirror with diameter of 39 meters and will be installed on the mountain Cerro Armazones in northern Chile. Will be more powerful than any other mega-telescope built to date.

E-ELT will be able to capture 12 times more light than the largest existing optical telescopes, allowing astronomers to observe much more details of celestial bodies and cosmic phenomena.

COPE researchers will use the enhanced capabilities of the mega-telescope to discover new potentially habitable planets, to study the nature and distribution of dark matter and dark energy, of which the universe is mostly composed of, but astronomers still failed to detect them directly.

"Mega-telescope will revolutionize optical and infrared astronomy. Its unique combination of clear images and huge capacity to capture light will give us many opportunities to observe cosmic phenomena in much finer detail", said Isobel Hook, a researcher at the University of Oxford.

Building E-ELT will ultimately cost the sum of 1.083 billion euros, and officials say the mega-ESO telescope will be operational from 2020.

See below some images with the telescope E-ELT and a VIDEO with some curiosities about him and his performances.


Related tags: