ELT: Extremely Large Telescope will be ready in about seven years and allow experts to study extrasolar planets.
Chilean Andes. At an altitude of 3,000 meters, construction has begun on the largest telescope ever built: The E-Elt (extremely large telescope). The new instrument will join those already at Eso (European Southern Observatory), a European organization for astronomical research in the southern hemisphere.
The ELT’s dimensions are impressive: the dome will have a diameter of 80 meters and a total weight of 5,000 tons. It will be able to rotate fully 360 degrees, and inside it, the actual telescope will be mounted. In addition, E-Elt will reach 39 meters of a mirror.
Other figures
In total, the structure will be 80 meters high. The 39-meter mirror will be built by joining 798 hexagonal mirrors. But the secondary mirror will also be record-breaking: 4.2 meters in diameter by 3.5 tons, used in support of the main mirror. To give an idea, we can give a concrete example: the surface area of the telescope more or less will be similar to that of a soccer field.
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Elt technology
The E-Elt will have the highest quality images thanks to the Adaptive Optics System, consisting of 4609 pneumatic mechanisms. Maory is made by Inaf and will enable the viewing of sharp, well-defined photographs better than those obtained today with the Hubble Space Telescope. And even better than those obtained with its successor, the Webb Space Telescope. The E-ELT‘s instruments will also include Hires, a very high-resolution spectrograph to analyze the chemical composition of stars and the atmospheres of extrasolar planets.