The contract for the dome and telescope structure of the European Extremely Large Telescope has today been signed. The E-ELT is expected to achieve first light in 2024 as the worlds largest optical/infrared telescope at 39.3 meters. The 400 million euro contract is the largest stake in the E-ELT investment and puts the telescope on track to not only be the largest and most ambitious but also the first of a new generation of extremely large telescope.
The E-ELT will tackle problems in galaxy evolution, study exoplanets as well as cosmology and the large scale structure of the universe. It's near infrared imager will have about 8 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope. It will reach deeper in spectroscopy that JWST and imaging at short wavelengths to study some of the first galaxies in the detail JWST will lack. It will reveal in 3 dimensions the processes that fuel galaxy formation as well as the mysterious Inter-Galactic Medium. With spectroscopy it discover and characterize earth like extrasolar planets, perhaps being the first facility to image rocky planets. It may even detect the expansion of the universe in real time over 20 years, if stability requirements can be met.
The E-ELT project has today taken a big step to transforming astronomy.
How can it be better than JWIST if it's on the ground?
Joseph Nguyen
It can outperform it in resolution with adpative optics. It outperforms it in some aspects of sensitivity by being fucking huge, it also has visible light capability.
Adaptive optics uses deformable mirrors to correct for seeing, the bluing affect of the atmosphere. Ground based telescopes can now recover the sorts of resolutions they would achieve in space. It has caveats, it is for now limited to the infrared and it works over small fields. E-ELT will push these constraints however and get a field of view that's only a few times smaller than JWST but with much more resolution.
Pic related is an Adaptive optics demonstrator on a 4 meter telescope outperforming hubble in the infrared.
It's fuckhuge, but the fact that it is on the ground limits the wavelengths it can see.
Grayson Jones
>I wanna put my dick in its lighthole.
Juan Phillips
I don't want to sound like a massive pop-sci faggot but can it see Planet Nine?
Nathaniel Perez
Sigh... if only we could actually build the Thirty Meter Telescope. It's the Superconducting supercollider all over again.
(North) Americans just can't science anymore.
Ryder Myers
the telescope would not be big enough to focus on your dick
Oliver Brooks
Planet 9 if it exists (which I doubt) probably isn't very dim. Around 24th magnitude in the faintest part of it's orbit in astronomy terms in the visible V band. There are sky surveys that go that deep but they don't cover the whole sky. Most of it's orbit has already been ruled out by existing surveys. What you really need in order to find it is not a huge telescope but a survey telescope, just to be able to cover enough sky to find it. If it exists E-ELT could take detailed data on it.
>you wouldn't touch the sides The focal plane is 2 meters across.
Wyatt Kelly
I didn't say I thought it would be pleasurable (it would), I just wanna, y'know, get it in there.
Cameron Bell
Aside from the permit problems TMT currently has the opposite problem from SSC, instead of the US government being the only funding source it hasn't actually got any government money yet. The US support for TMT is private, universities and foundations. Currently astronomers outside participating institutions (e.g. Caltec and the California universities who started TMT or CELT) have no right of access. If NSF doesn't fund either TMT or the Giant Magellan telescope US many US astronomers will not be able to apply for time. It's quite mad.
In Europe the have the European Southern Observatory who may suck up most the astronomy money in Europe but they have their shit together.
Brayden Gonzalez
Why the duck would they build another bug Ben next to it, it would get in the way if the fuckikg pictures
Nolan Thomas
>European Extremely Large Telescope how fuck scientists have no vocabulary nor creativity in naming this. how dumb are they ?
Jayden Gray
They're probably German.
Juan Price
I belive astronomers are actually competing to give the most ridiculous names to their telescopes.
Oliver Allen
Fuck-Huge Sky-Penetrator was taken
Easton Robinson
Its happening! I'm excited, soon astronomers all over the world can constantly discover instead of waiting 5 years to spend a night in the only couple telescopes on the planet useful for groundbreaking discovery
Alexander Hill
Seriously wtf
Carson Cox
It describes what it is, same as the LHC. A tool.
Charles Martinez
>A tool.
I guess that's why your parents called you 'mistake' lmoa
Luis Smith
...
Adrian Thomas
What will be bigger telescope called?
Nathaniel Martin
It might actually be this next time
James Smith
An earlier proposed project was the "Overwhelmingly Large Telescope", 100m across.
Isaiah Hughes
Was that a serious name idea or you fucking around?
