Dive Brief:
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Construction on the largest telescope ever designed will begin late next year and the device will start operating in 2024.
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Aptly named the European Extremely Large Telescope, or E-ELT for short, it will feature a light-collecting surface measuring 128 feet and will be located near the Cerro Armazones Observatory atop a mountain of the same name in Chile.
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The colossal telescope is a joint effort of more than a dozen European and South American countries.
Dive Insight:
The world’s most powerful telescope is one of three oversized devices ready for construction. The other two: The Giant Magellan Telescope, with a light-collecting surface of 80 feet, will be built on another Chilean mountain, Las Campanas; the Thirty Meter Telescope will have a 98-foot-wide light-collecting surface and will be located in Hawaii.
The telescopes are needed to see into nearby galaxies and to discover planets with masses similar to Earth.