A giant European telescope rises as U.S. rivals await rescue

Tom Scott did a video on the ELT about a month ago:<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QqRREz0iBes">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QqRREz0iBes</a><p>Most of the video is an explanation of (a) why ground-based telescopes are still useful, and (b) why ganging up multiple telescopes (to create a large &#x27;virtual&#x27; area) only goes so far, and then he gets into the ELT in part three of the video.<p>It&#x27;s big. The scale is remarkable.

These sums of money are so pathetically small. We routinely drop similar sums on seemingly random stuff, none of which ever returns even a small amount of awesome.

These giant facilities are in a sense humanity&#x27;s artificial &quot;exo-sensors&quot;, an augmentation of our ability to perceive and understand the Universe. They are costly in comparison to resources accessible to an indvidual but still manageable when done collectively by large countries or country coalitions. Its not clear when and how competition can be a plus in this space. If the core technology is similar&#x2F;known it may make sense to just pool the widest possible international resources and build the largest possible thing. But there is also something to be said about competing teams taking calculated risks with exploring new directions.

Tom Scott recently posted a great, 30-minute video about this telescope. Highly recommended.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QqRREz0iBes">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QqRREz0iBes</a>

Recently there was a video link posted here about the process of aligning the JWST&#x27;s 18 mirror segments that shed light on the complexity. The task looked challenging at 18, but it goes to mind boggling at 798 segments of the ELT primary mirror. The level of impressiveness is astronomical.

&gt; likely to be more than $100 million annually<p>Oof.<p>Should the US have just partnered with Europe? Seems like a bigger telescope would have been better than two individual projects (with one struggling significantly).

&gt; Next month, the first batch of polished mirror segments should set off from France by ship in a temperature-controlled container.<p>Why do they need a temperature-controlled container for shipping? I would have expected that temperature control would only be needed once they&#x27;re deployed and in service.

Adjust both for those low orbit satellite plus gravity. But I think it is great to have some around. If nothing else, let us not discovery end day asteroid days before it arrived.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Extremely_Large_Telescope" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Extremely_Large_Telescope</a><p><i>It has around 250 times the light gathering area of the Hubble Space Telescope and, according to the ELT&#x27;s specifications, would provide images 16 times sharper than those from Hubble.</i><p>Edit: Wow, this construction image from August:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;thumb&#x2F;7&#x2F;75&#x2F;Almost_dome_%28elt-huedepohl-aug2023-drone1%29.jpg&#x2F;2880px-Almost_dome_%28elt-huedepohl-aug2023-drone1%29.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;thumb&#x2F;7&#x2F;75&#x2F;Al...</a>