The world's biggest eye to watch the sky

Coinciding with the celebration of its 50th anniversary, the European Southern Observatory(ESO) has launched the construction of the telescope optical / infrared world's largest. The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) is a segmented mirror telescope 39.3 meters in diameter, located in Cerro Armazones (Chile), and will begin science operations early next decade. According to its proponents, will cover an area of ​​sky about one tenth the size of the full Moon. Be four to five times larger than the current state of the art facilities of this type, bringing together about 15 times more light.

The piece the longer it takes to design and build complex adaptive mirror will be the M4, which will be about 2.5 meters in diameter, but a thickness of only 2 mm, allowing its deformation as if it were a flexible sheet . M4 is responsible for correcting both the effects produced by atmospheric turbulence as the wind on the telescope structure. Once installed, this extraordinary deformable mirror to the E-ELT will reach the theoretical maximum for resolution.

Thus, and E-ELT will become "the world's biggest eye to watch the sky" and address some of the greatest scientific challenges of our time, including tracking of planets like Earth around other stars in the "habitable zones" where life could exist. Also perform "stellar archeology" in nearby galaxies. It also used to investigate the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organization in Europe and the most productive astronomical observatory in the world. Fifteen countries support this institution: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Holland, Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Sweden and Switzerland. ESO is the European partner of another revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the most ambitious astronomical project development.