Cerro Armazones and Cerro Paranal in Chile

View from above of the 2600 m high Cerro Paranal, home to ESO's flagship Very Large Telescope, and the 3000 m high Cerro Armazones in Chile, as seen in Google Earth. Cerro Armazones is the future home of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). It is located in the Atacama Desert, perhaps the driest place on Earth.

The ELT programme office assessed many potential sites for the future ELT observatory, which, with its 40-metre-class diameter mirror, will be the world’s biggest eye on the sky. Cerro Armazones was the ELT Site Selection Advisory Committee's recommended site, because it has the best balance of sky quality across all aspects and can be operated in an integrated fashion with the existing Paranal Observatory. The ESO Council selected Cerro Armazones as the baseline site for the ELT in April 2010.