Next Gen observatory almost ready to go?

[LunarLight]

Hey Guys

Just thought I would share this cool little storey from Nature magazine. Apparently construction of European Southern Observatory's new telescope is almost finalised. Construction is rumoured to begin in 2012 and last until 2021.

Its called E-ELT, the very imaginative European Extremely Large Telescope (who invents these names lol). It has a segmented main mirror that is 42 meters across!! that's 15 times more light gathering capacity than today's most powerful ground based scopes!

Rumour has it that it may be powerful enough to image planets around neighbouring stars and see the very earliest of galaxies and stars! how cool is that! frankly im excited at the possibilities such a scope would bring :-D

[reddoss]

That is very scientifically exciting, and I am looking forward to the results.

However as I do quite a bit of my research at 2 major European funded physics research facilities based in France, I'm afraid I take a rather sceptical view of very large scientific projects funded by the EU.

The politics of these institutions is run along the lines of the Euro vision song contest. So when it comes to UK scientists applying for telescope time I can just hear the response from the telescope time allocation committee ........'Grande-Bretagne......nil points':)

[JamesF]

You'll never get it in the back garden...

James

[Hypernova]

Can't wait until it is fully operational, that 'scope is going to provide some pretty good images and whole load of data

Deep down I want to work in a place like that if my astrophysics career goes the right way

[FraserClarke]

I'm afraid I take a rather sceptical view of very large scientific projects funded by the EU.

The politics of these institutions is run along the lines of the Euro vision song contest. So when it comes to UK scientists applying for telescope time I can just hear the response from the telescope time allocation committee ........'Grande-Bretagne......nil points':)

There is (at present) no EU funding for this project. All the funding comes from the member states of ESO (which is basically all the major countries in Europe), rather than a central EU pot.

UK scientist historically have a very good record of getting observing time on European (and other international) facilities. We tend to write good proposals, and have a very strong astronomical community. How that might change in current funding climates is up for debate!

If anyone wants more information on the project, the ESO public webpage is here;

ESO - The European Extremely Large Telescope

There is also a scientist-focused webpage, but that probably contains less useful information to be honest