European Southern Observatory has big plans. Their new observatory will be one of the most awesome instruments built on Earth. European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) is going to see the first light on 2017. E-ELT is one of the biggest telescopes to be built with its diameter of 42 meters. ESO started planning a gigantic OWL-telescope (Overwhelmingly Large Telescope) which was 100 meters in diameter, but realized that the project would not initiate during the next ten years. Now ESO is looking forward to building an instrument that will clearly become the biggest mirror telescope on Earth. Read more about mirror telescopes in here.

The agency behind the E-ELT is the European Southern Observatory (ESO), which has 11 member countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK) and is based in Garching, near Munich, in Germany.

Planning of E-ELT project was started in December 2006 when ESO dedicated 57 million euros to the research project in which the goal was to find out it is possible to build E-ELT. Initial budget calculations have resulted into 800 million euros which includes design, construction and operation costs of E-ELT. The site of this staggering instrument has not been defined yet, but possible locations are Chile and Canary Islands. Also Antarctica has been in discussions, but most probably logistic problems will kill this idea.

If ever built, the massive E-ELT will be used to find out how stars and planets have been formed. The instrument will work best in infrared wavelengths where it is possible to observe young stars and planets as well as the very first galaxies of the universe, born only hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang.

The main mirror of E-ELT is 42 meters in diameter, and it is a mosaic mirror with 902 hexagonal segments. E-ELT’s weight is 5000 tons and its height is 80 meters. Its focal length is 420-840 meters and it works on infrared wavelength. E-ELT will be more than 100 times more sensitive than the present-day largest optical telescopes, such as the 10-meter Keck telescopes.

According to Huliq.Com, Professor Gerry Gilmore from University of Cambridge anticipates tremendous new science being made possible saying “The E-ELT is critical to allow the next big advance in understanding our mysterious Universe. We will search for planets similar to the Earth around other stars, discover the nature of matter by mapping the distribution and properties of the dark matter, which is the matter of which Nature is made, not the rather unimportant amount of stuff of which we are made, and investigate the future of the Universe - is time infinite - by examining the Dark energy which seems to control the fate of space-time“.

According to ESO website, “Extremely Large Telescopes are considered worldwide as one of the highest priorities in ground-based astronomy. They will vastly advance astrophysical knowledge, allowing detailed studies of subjects including planets around other stars, the first objects in the Universe, super-massive black holes, and the nature and distribution of the dark matter and dark energy which dominate the Universe“.

There were a number of news about E-ELT project in 2006, but in 2007 and 2008 the amount of E-ELT news has decreased to minimum. Will E-ELT ever built? It looks like we still need to wait awhile until we know. I feel E-ELT would be a nice telescope, but personally I would prefer the development of space telescopes such as Hubble Space Telescope. The point is that telescopes located on Earth suffer from pollution and atmosphere, while telescopes located in space have a “clear sight”. Naturally a telescope located on Earth has pros and cons when compared to telescopes located in space, but as said, personally I prefer moving telescopes to space.