Europe's Extremely Large Telescope vs SydneyOpera House

[Ichingcarpenter]

Construction has begun

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Damn, that thing is big.

The pyramids really put it into perspective.

Thanks.

[Jeff Murdoch]

2. Is this one going into the Atacama as well? n/t

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. Outside of Vegas

It's really just a fake Casino



Just kidding you are right

[olddots]

3. we're building mc'mansions in Murica

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. The US Webb space telescope will be awesome too

And its on its way too

[William Seger]

7. Yes!

In terms of both scientific knowledge and awesome beauty, I believe Hubble has been the most productive and significant scientific instrument ever built, bar none, and Webb is a big next step. I can hardly wait! I'm really happy that we haven't gotten so, um, Republican that we stop funding "big science" projects.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. I can hardly wait for the RGT ...

Really Ginormous Telescope

That's bound to be next.

[jakeXT]

8. They cancelled the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. Notice the human to scale on right bottom?

Great info history

Thanks

[jakeXT]

11. more humans

http://cosmicdiary.org/fmarchis/2011/09/29/an-elt-made-of-cardboard-in-your-garden/

[jakeXT]

9. And they had to blow up the mountaintop

[Thor_MN]

12. With telescopes, size matters.

Then again, with adaptive optics, motion is important too...

[Bearware]

13. When I see yet another one of these I keep wondering why we are not building them in orbit

Is it a mind set or is there some overwhelming physics reason we have not started building extremely large telescopes (from radio to x-ray) in orbit?

It takes a huge amount of money and effort to get a large telescope in orbit - a lot of which goes into just making it so it can survive the launch. Why are we not launching the raw materials and potentially semi-autonomous robots to build ultra-low mass telescopes in a micro gravity and high vacuum environment? If something in a design doesn't work, modify it in orbit or melt it down and turn it into a new design in orbit.


Having a telescope in an atmosphere forces all sorts of huge limitations on it's capabilities and availability.