Artist's impression of the Milky Way rising over the ELT in Chile.
Credit: ESO
BERLIN: Chile won the right to host the largest-ever telescope, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has announced, and it is due to begin operation in 2018.
The other main contender site for the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) was the Spanish isle of La Palma in the Canary Islands off western Africa.
The ESO, an intergovernmental astronomical research agency, already has three facilities operating in the Atacama Desert, including the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the town of Paranal, which is currently considered the foremost European-operated observatory.
1.3-billion-dollar project
The ELT is intended to dwarf the VLT. Work on the new telescope is to begin in December 2011 and cost an estimated 1.3 billion dollars (97 million euros).
"This is an important milestone that allows us to finalise the baseline design of this very ambitious project, which will vastly advance astronomical knowledge," ESO Director General Tim de Zeeuw said of the decision for Chile in a statement.
The project calls for the construction of a huge telescope with a mirror 42 meters (138 feet) in diameter - nearly as big as an Olympic-sized swimming pool. It will permit optical and near-infrared peering into the heavens.
High-altitude, cloud-free desert
Advocates argued that the Armazones mountain, altitude 3060 metres, in the northern Chilean desert was the perfect place because of skies that are cloud-free 320 nights a year.
The region has extremely low humidity and is also free of the storms that lash the Canary Islands. In addition, the ESO's Paranal observatory meant that much of the ground infrastructure was already in place.
Chile's government actively lobbied to host the ELT, agreeing to donate a substantial tract of land "to ensure the continued protection of the site against all adverse influences, in particular light pollution and mining activities," the ESO said.
When complete, the device will be "the world's biggest eye on the sky," according to the ESO, which hopes it will "address many of the most pressing unsolved questions in astronomy."
