E-ELT, European Extremely Large Telescope Options

[jamescanvin]

http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2006/pr-46-06.html

57 million euros for a detailed study, construction starting in 3 years.

42m primary , 6m secondary!



James

[dilo]

"This fast pace has also been possible thanks to early conceptual studies in Europe (such as the ESO OWL and the EURO-50 studies)"

I'm not so happy considering that they canceled the OWL project which was 100m mirror (especially considering that estimated cost of OWL is only 50-60% above E-ELT)!

[climber]

"This fast pace has also been possible thanks to early conceptual studies in Europe (such as the ESO OWL and the EURO-50 studies)"

I'm not so happy considering that they canceled the OWL project which was 100m mirror (especially considering that estimated cost of OWL is only 50-60% above E-ELT)!

I agree Dilo, they firs sold us OWL and sized it down to E-ELT. Buta anyway, remember they once envisioned a 4.5m (IIRM) mirror for Hubble...and look what he's doing anyway

[edstrick]

Going from 8.5 and 10 meter segmented and/or monolitihc mirrors to a 100 meter one is too big a jump. The optimum jump is in the 25 to 35 meter range (2.5 x to 3.5 x increase beyond Keck) That would put a 100 meter OWL (*LOVE* that name/acronym) as a reasonable next jump.

[helvick]

That would put a 100 meter OWL (*LOVE* that name/acronym) as a reasonable next jump.

As far as wonderful acronyms are concerned I first came across OWL in an article that also mentioned an even better title - Gigantic Optical Device.

[Roly]

Is there any practical way to build the E-ELT "for" but not "with" the capability for adding another for interferometry, say if the money comes up 10 years after it begins operations? The only thing better than one 42m telescope is two surely, especially if the line for manufacturing segments is already up and running. It's would be wonderful if these ELT various proposals could be co-ordinated, so there was a common facility and specification for mirror segments. The savings would have to be non-trivial.

Probably a foolish idea but I love the idea of two 42m telescopes (I love the idea of one as well!) , and perhaps a few 30m ones built "cheaply" from high volume segment manufacture.

cheers

Roly

[dilo]

Probably a foolish idea but I love the idea of two 42m telescopes (I love the idea of one as well!) , and perhaps a few 30m ones built "cheaply" from high volume segment manufacture.

Roly, I think your idea is far from to be foolish: probably, a Super-VLT made of 5/6 E-ELT well positioned and interferometrically connected would be better than OWL!

[dvandorn]

As far as wonderful acronyms are concerned I first came across OWL in an article that also mentioned an even better title - Gigantic Optical Device.

I toyed with designing a Graphic Omniscient Device, once. But no matter what I did, it ended up looking like me...

-the other Doug

[DEChengst]

I'm not so happy considering that they canceled the OWL project which was 100m mirror.

That the final telescope would be smaller than planned was already forseen by the scientists that proposed to build the OWL. From the OWL FAQ on the ESO website:

"If budgetary considerations will force the final OWL to be smaller than 100-m, it may eventually mean Originally Was Larger ".

[jamescanvin]

Personally I'm glad that a 100m OWL is canceled for now, it was just a bit too "overwhelming". I think the challenges of this 42m monster are going to be huge, jumping straight to 100m would have been crazy and could have resulted in a lot of wasted money. Those of you unhappy about this, think of this as a OWL prototype, I'm sure we'll get a 100m class scope one day, and it's going to be a lot easier after a few 30-50m ones have been built.

James

[dilo]

"If budgetary considerations will force the final OWL to be smaller than 100-m, it may eventually mean Originally Was Larger ".

LOL !

[climber]

I'm sure we'll get a 100m class scope one day, and it's going to be a lot easier after a few 30-50m ones have been built.
James

Agree and I feel we can start to think about a 10 m near the Moon Base too. I guess it's not longer science fiction even if still remote. That'll be a big step...specialy if we can do an Earth-Moon interferometer : will get better pictures of Mars than what MRO's doing now

[edstrick]

Maybe the next scale instrument will be the BLT (Bacon Lettuce and Tomato) ... or is that Bogglaceously Large Telescope?

[dvandorn]

I will point out that, according to some experts I've heard expound on the subject, interferometry doesn't work well in visible wavelengths of light, and that with current technology you almost need a physical connection between the two oberving points to time your observations such that interferometry is possible in the first place. Sort of put a huge damper on the concept of placing several large telescopes all over the globe to achieve a virtual aperature of thousands of km...

-the other Doug

[remcook]

it works in the radio frequencies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Long_Bas..._Interferometry
http://www.jive.nl/~mag/hdf/evn/pr/

As I understand it, for VIS/IR the wavelength is obviously much shorter and therefore there are more stringent requirements on the timing of the phases. So you need actual beams interfering physically and even that is hard!