ESO / Swinburne Astronomy Productions
An Extremely Large Telescope... That's the actual name, or most of it, that the European Southern Observatory is giving to its next ground-based telescope when construction begins on the apparatus as early as this year. The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will be built atop the Cerro Armazones mountain in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and have a primary mirror—which will be segmented like those of the twin Keck telescopes—that is 138 feet (42 meters) wide. Speaking of the Keck telescopes, their main mirrors each measure 33 feet (10 meters) across. Japan’s Subaru telescope, which along with Keck Observatory is based on the summit of Mauna Kea at the Big Island of Hawaii, has a primary mirror that measures 27 feet (8.2 meters) wide.
ESO / S. Brunier
E-ELT, which will cost around 1.082 billion Euros (U.S. $1.43 billion) to build, is being based in Chile for the sole fact the weather is clear for at least 320 nights of the year. If the space shuttles were still in operation, I'd hope that Florida would have had as many clear skies so the launches wouldn't have been delayed so much. But that's in the past now...and off-topic. Carry on.
ESO / Swinburne Astronomy Productions
ESO
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