Construction of World's Largest Telescope Finally Underway in Chile 76
mpicpp (3454017) writes with this update about a long-awaited project, the European Extremely Large Telescope: The partial demolition of Cerro Armazones, a mountain in northern Chile's Antofagasta region, marked the start of constructing the world's largest and most powerful telescope, an instrument capable of capturing 14 times more light than existing telescopes. At 2:00 p.m. Thursday, the blasting of Cerro Armazones, 3,060 meters (11,800 feet) high, removed from the peak between 25 and 30 meters (80 and 100 feet) of its height in order to create a plain some 200 meters (655 feet) long, on which to mount the European Extremely Large Telescope, or E-ELT, a project of the European Southern Observatory. On this site will be built a structure 60 meters (200 feet) high and 80 meters (260 feet) in diameter, with mirrors of 39.3 meters (129 feet) which in 10 years will begin to explore the origins of the universe. The telescope will shed light on the 'dark ages' of the universe, when the Milky Way was only 500,000 years old, and thanks to its enormous size it could also contribute to finding extraterrestrial life by detecting whether exoplanets have oxygen in their atmospheres.
Extremely Large Telescope (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Extremely Large Telescope (Score:4, Informative)
Have a blast [youtube.com]
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What a let down. I've seen M80's do more damage.
You call that an earth shattering kaboom?
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What a let down. I've seen M80's do more damage.
You don't level a mountain top with one big explosion. You set off a charge, clear the rubble, place the next charge, and repeat. They will probably set off hundreds of individual charges over several months.
One big explosion would produce a more jagged surface, and likely cause deep fractures that could result in instability during one of Chile's frequent earthquakes.
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Then assemble the Huge Ass Mirrors.
It's bad enough seeing a huge ass directly. I don't want to have to cope with reflections of it as well.
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the difference is size, detecting the atmosphere of a planet is totally different from detecting single electrons. Please study some science. You would be well served.
Re: damn (Score:1)
No, you cannot image something smaller than the wavelength of the light you are using. They use spectrography to figure out what composition of molecules emitted the light.
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couldn't they technically observe whether my brain has neurons...
I very much doubt they are going to observe any of those in your brain.
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Wow. Just wow,
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The Extremely Large Telescope is a compromise - what they really wanted was the 100m-diameter Overwhelmingly Large Telescope. [wikipedia.org]
Their naming committees are either entirely humourless or gloriously taking the piss.
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Re:Next in pipeline: Honking Humugous Telescope (Score:5, Funny)
Not As Large As Your Mom But Still Large Telescope.
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I believe after a certain point the naming convention wraps around into understatement: the next largest telescope after the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope will be the Pretty Big Telescope.
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I think it is political. When you need a name that doesn't favour any member of the ESO references to its size are the best option. I guess ESO 39.3 meter telescope would be about the only other option.
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it's negotiation tactics. now the choosers didn't choose the most expensive.
next up is of course proposing to build the humongous laughably large telescope and settling for the overwhelmingly large.
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The 'OWL' was the first telescope in this series of names as far as I know. I think all the others since have been given 'OWL' like names.
It's a bit unfair to say the 'OWL' project was cancelled because it was really only a feasibility study, and back in the 1980's rather a bonkers one at that. When people started working with computer-controlled segmented mirrors, it because clear that you could make a huge mirror from almost flat segments of glass. So the next step was to see whether you could make a m
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+1, Interesting.
(Thanks!)
Early 2020s? (Score:4, Interesting)
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First Light slated for 2022, regular operation later.
Expect a grand First Light party, not dissimilar to First Frost parties (gifts optional)
capturing 14 times more light than existing telesc (Score:1)
question: " ...capturing 14 times more light than existing telescope" on Earth, or including in orbit?
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Considering how it should be trivial to make a telescope that's by some magnitude bigger and more powerful than anything we could possibly send into orbit, I somehow fail to understand the question?
Re: capturing 14 times more light than existing te (Score:2)
You don't fix bad data with software. You just express how you're going to make due with what you have.
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Actually, that's exactly what is being done.
A laser beam is sent through the atmosphere and its dispersion is calculated, then the telescope mirrors are realigned microscopically to compensate. Think of it as some kind of "telescope glasses". The results are incredible.
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The worlds largest optical/near-IR telescope (Score:1)
As cool as it is to see this finally start construction, this won't be the worlds largest telescope when completed, it will be the largest one designed to work at optical/near-infrared wavelengths. The worlds largest single dish telescope is still the Green Bank Telescope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bank_Telescope), which at 100m is ~6x the size. But it's a radio telescope, and it's a lot easier to build large radio telescopes than large optical ones because the surface doesn't need to be as preci
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The worlds largest fully steerable single dish telescope is still the Green Bank Telescope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bank_Telescope), which at 100m is ~6x the size
FTFY
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World's largest fully-steerable single-dish telescope - the Arecibo Observatory [wikipedia.org] is larger still at a diameter of 300m! (Impressive Arecibo exploration video here [youtube.com]. The thing's sodding enormous.)
I went looking for the largest diameter multi-dish radio telescope. It looks like the biggest terrestrial 'telescope' is the Global VLBI system created by combin
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World's largest fully-steerable single-dish telescope - the Arecibo Observatory [wikipedia.org] is larger still at a diameter of 300m! (Impressive Arecibo exploration video here [youtube.com].
I guess "fully steerable" means "within ~20 of zenith" to you. But that's not what the rest of the world considers "fully steerable".
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Oops. That was in reference to his Green Bank Telescope link - Arecibo being only partially steerable...
Shedding some light (Score:2, Informative)
> The telescope will shed light on the 'dark ages' of the universe,
No, actually the telescope will *collect* light from the dark ages of the universe. If it shed light it would be the world's biggest fucking flashlight.
If you want to be pedantic, it *will* shed light, from several lasers mounted on the sides of the telescope structure. Those create artificial stars in the upper atmosphere so that atmospheric distortion can be cancelled by the adaptive optics. But those are attachments, not the main te
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Your post only proves that two pedantic statements are worse than one.
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> The telescope will shed light on the 'dark ages' of the universe,
No, actually the telescope will *collect* light from the dark ages of the universe. If it shed light it would be the world's biggest fucking flashlight.
Being a pedant is hard these days.
It will metaphorically 'shed' light on the dark ages of the universe by collecting the light from said dark age.
Of course following Muphry's law I've probably made some mistake in my post.
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Of course following Muphry's law I've probably made some mistake in my post.
If only you'd said "definitely" - then by not making a mistake you would have made a mistake.
Re: Shedding some light (Score:2)
...how did you miss Muphry? :-P
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Because it wasn't wrong [wikipedia.org].
Re: Shedding some light (Score:2)
...the more you know! Thanks!
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*Whoosh* - The sound of a metaphor going over your head.
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If it shed light it would be the world's biggest fucking flashlight.
I fail to see how a Fleshlight shed's light.
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I just hope it doesn't discover the Goatse Nebula, or the Goatse Galaxy.
Actually, it would be pretty damn hilarious if either of those were actually out there somewhere in the vast cosmos.
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I just hope it doesn't discover the Goatse Nebula, or the Goatse Galaxy.
You can see it in the image collected. Just bend over a bit more to get closer to the monitor...
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Just as long as I don't have to see Uranus... [youtube.com]
Skies in Chile... (Score:2)
Incorrect link in TFS... (Score:2)
The Very Large Telescope (linked in TFS) has been in service for some years... the telescope under construction is the European Extremely Large Telescope [eso.org].
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Not good without a video (Score:2)
Blasting (Score:2)
close to 20 kilometers (12 miles) upwind from Cerro Paranal, the mountain where the predecessor of the E-ELT is in operation.
FTFY.
We don't want to find extra-terrestrial life (Score:2)
Or rather, we don't want them to find us. Because they most probably are milions of years ahead of us and they'll see us as animals, not as intelligent life.