Chile picked for giant telescope

The 42-meter European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will be built at the 3060-meter-high Cerro Armazones site in Chile’s Atacama Desert, according to a 26 April statement released by the European Southern Observatory, the project’s coordinating body. Chile beat out the island of Las Palmas in Spain, an ESO member state, in the site competition.

“This allows us to finalize the baseline design of this very ambitious project,” says ESO director general Tim de Zeeuw. “Adding the transformational scientific capabilities of the E-ELT to ESO’s already tremendously powerful Very Large Telescope [VLT, 20 km from the E-ELT site] further strengthens ESO’s position as the world-leading organization for ground-based astronomy.”

The Chilean government is donating a tract of land contiguous to the VLT site and containing Armazones to ensure that the telescopes are protected from light pollution and mining activities.

The final go-ahead for construction of the E-ELT is expected at the end of this year, with the start of operations planned for 2018.