Chile started construction of the world's largest telescope

On June 19, the world's largest telescope construction project (E-ELT) in Chile was officially started after years of delay.

According to the European Space Research Organization in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), the first step in this project is to remove 5,000 cubic meters of rock from the summit of Mount Armazones. This mountain is located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. With an altitude of over 3,000m, Mount Armazones will be the ideal place to place "the world's largest observation eye".

It is expected that the entire construction and installation of telescope E-ELT will end in 2024 and officially go into operation two years later, much later than originally planned to be completed. 2018.

The extremely large future telescope of Europe (E-ELT) will be located atop Cerro Armazones of Chile.(Photo: phys.org)

With an investment of US $ 1.5 billion, E-ELT is designed by ESO to help astronomers better observe the development of the universe, as well as search for planets that may exist. as on Earth.

Owning a diameter of 39m, made up of about 1,000 hexagonal lenses, size 1.45m per piece, E-ELT has 10-15 times more luminous surface than current telescopes.

Where the sky is always clear for more than 300 nights a year, extremely low humidity and almost never stormed, ESO's Chile Atacama desert is the most ideal place in the world to observe astronomy. Chile is also the country with the most cosmic observatories in the world with 5 stations being operated by organizations of the US, European Union (EU), Japan and Brazil.

ESO is an astronomical research organization, founded in 1962 with the participation of 15 countries, including Germany, France, England, Netherlands and Italy. The organization is responsible for operating a series of world telescopes in Chile, including the world's largest telescope to date, ALMA.