European Extremely Large Telescope given go-ahead
The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will have a primary
mirror some 40m in diameter, and will be built on top of a mountain in
Chile.
Member states of the European Southern Observatory (Eso) organisation
declared their support for the project on Monday at a meeting in
Garching, Germany.
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The E-ELT would take advantage of the
very arid conditions in
Chile’s Atacama desert Pic. courtesy: BBC NEWS |
They have not yet, however, put all of the 1bn euros of financing in
place.
That may be possible by December, at the organisation's next council
meeting.
By then, Brazil should also have become the 15th full member of Eso,
further spreading the E-ELT's cost and making it more affordable for all
nations.
The telescope should be ready for use by about 2022, and will be one
of the key astronomical facilities of 21st century, complementing other
huge observatories that will view the sky at different wavelengths of
light.
The E-ELT will detect objects in the visible and near-infrared. Its
39.3m main mirror will be more than four times the width of today's best
optical telescopes (antennas for radio telescopes are still very much
bigger).
Its sensitivity and resolution should make it possible to image
directly rocky planets beyond our Solar System.
The observatory should also be able to provide major insights into
the nature of black holes, galaxy formation, the mysterious 'dark
matter' that pervades the Universe, and the even more mysterious 'dark
energy' which appears to be pushing the cosmos apart at an accelerating
rate.
At the Garching meeting, six nations (Austria, the Czech Republic,
Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland) were in a position to
declare their full support to proceed with the project; four nations
(Belgium, Finland, Italy, and the United Kingdom) declared their support
pending approval from their governments; and the remaining four
(Denmark, France, Portugal, Spain) said they continued to work towards
full approval.
The commitments from two-thirds of the members are sufficient at this
stage to permit Eso to proceed with the project.
Prof Isobel Hook is the UK E-ELT project scientist from the
University of Oxford. She said Monday's decision was hugely exciting.
“We've all been working towards this moment for a long time, and this
decision means we're now just a few years away from using this
telescope,” she told BBC News.
“The E-ELT's great size will give us much sharper images, provided we
can correct for atmospheric turbulence (which makes stars twinkle), and
that will be part of the telescope's design. The E-ELT will also have a
much larger collecting area than any telescope we have now. That
combination of sharpness and collecting area is what will make it so
powerful.”
Eso Council Eso member states took the historic decision at their
council meeting in Garching, Germany.
The telescope will be sited on Cerro Armazones, a mountain that is
just 20km from Cerro Paranal where Eso currently operates its Very Large
Telescope (VLT) facility - a suite of interconnected optical telescopes
that includes four units with primary mirrors measuring 8.2m.
Like Paranal, Armazones will enjoy near-perfect observing conditions
- at least 320 nights a year when the sky is cloudless.
The famous aridity found in Chile's Atacama desert means the amount
of water vapour in the skies above the observatory will be very limited,
reducing further the perturbation starlight experiences as it passes
through the Earth's atmosphere.
One of the first tasks will be to remove the top of the mountain to
make a flat base for the telescope and its housing, which will be the
size of a football stadium.
Even before that work is undertaken, a road will need to be
constructed on the slopes of Cerro Armazones to get heavy earth-moving
equipment on site.
The funding for the road and some design work on the E-ELT's Number
Four mirror was approved at last December's council meeting.
Eso's principles require 90 percent of the funding to be in place
before spending goes beyond the initial civil works.
The total cost of the venture is currently projected to be 1,083
million euros (at 2012 prices).
Prof Gerry Gilmore at Cambridge University played a key role in the
early definition phases of the E-ELT, bringing together various
competing ideas into a single project.
He told the BBC: “We all know the grand questions we want to ask -
‘What is time? What is existence? What is reality? Is there life out
there?'. And we know that we need technology to answer those questions.
So, to see this technology being brought together in the E-ELT, with
European leadership, is simply wonderful.”
Courtesy: BBC NEWS
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