The ELT grows on Cerro Armazones (II)

Artist´s impression of how Cerro Armazones, in the Atacama Desert, may look by 2012. Cerro Armazones was selected as the site for the planned Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), on 26 April 2010. The go ahead for ELT construction is expected in 2010, with the start of operations planned for early in the next decade. By 2012, the foundations should have been built and the structure of the enclosure should start growing. With its 40-metre-class diameter mirror, the ELT will be the largest optical/near-infrared telescope in the world. Cerro Armazones is a mountain at an altitude of 3046 metres in the II Region of Chile, some 130 kilometres south of the town of Antofagasta and about 20 kilometres away from Cerro Paranal, home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).

The design for the ELT shown here was published in 2009 and is preliminary.