Would you look at the size of that thing! Pictured above is the European Extremely Large Telescope, or E-ELT for short. ELT’s are a priority for the world’s astronomers because they are going to be able to reveal things that we have never seen before by giving scientists a mammoth viewing lens into the night sky.
When they call this thing large, they mean it. The lens alone is going to be 40 meters wide, which is 131 feet and some change. It will be the largest lens on the planet, and will be capable of giving us a new view of distant space. Apparently it will be able to capture images that are 15x sharper than Hubble.
One of the priorities for the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is to track down Earth-like planets, as well as planets in habitable zones. In addition, the ESO will be focusing on super-massive black holes, working to uncover more information on dark matter and its dispersal in the universe.
The lens itself it an interesting feat of engineering, as it is not going to be one solid piece of glass. It probably is not a good idea to create a piece of that size anyway, as can you imagine trying to fit that in the back of your truck to transport it out to the site? The ESO can’t either, so in a move that is both saving them money, and making it easier to transport and install, they have split the lens up into 798 hexagonal segments. Thus creating a situation where they are ordering glass in bulk to drop the price, and making it easier on the poor guy/team that has to install it.