326
THE BIGGEST
EYE ON THE SKY
LOOKING FARTHER INTO SPACE
IN CONTEXT
KEY DEVELOPMENT
European Extremely
Large Telescope (2 014 –)BEFORE
1610 Galileo Galilei makes
the first recorded astronomical
observations using a telescope.1668 Isaac Newton makes the
first usable reflecting telescope.1946 Lyman Spitzer Jr.
suggests putting telescopes
in space to avoid Earth’s
atmospheric interference.1990 The Hubble Space
Telescope is launched.AFTER
2015 Construction begins in
Chile on the US-led 72-ft (22-m)
Giant Magellan Telescope.2016 LIGO detects the
gravitational waves of objects
in space.2018 The James Webb
Space Telescope will become
the largest telescope ever
launched into space.D
espite its name, the ESO,
or European Southern
Observatory, is located
in northern Chile, a region of dry
desert and high mountains ideal
for ground-based astronomy.
This collaborative organization
of 15 European countries, along
with Brazil and Chile, has been
pushing the limits of astronomy
for more than 50 years.Big telescopes
The ESO uses literal names for
its telescopes. In 1989, it began
operating the New TechnologyTelescope, the new technology
being adaptive optics that reduce
the blurring effect on images
caused by the turbulence of the
atmosphere. In 1999, it opened
its Very Large Telescope, which
comprises four 27-ft (8.2-m)
reflecting telescopes that can be
used together. The Atacama Large
Millimeter Array, a vast radio
telescope with 66 antennae, then
became operational in 2013. This
is the largest ESO program to date,
and the largest ground-based
astronomical project of all time.
In 2014, however, the ESO receivedEuropean Southern Observatory
Formed in 1962, the ESO today
has 17 member countries:
Austria, Belgium, the Czech
Republic, Denmark, Finland,
France, Germany, Italy, the
Netherlands, Poland, Portugal,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and
the UK, with Chile and Brazil.
It is located in the Atacama
Desert of Chile, chosen for its
clear, moisture-free skies and
the absence of light pollution.
The ESO’s headquarters is
near Munich, Germany, but
its working base is the ParanalObservatory, an ultra-modern
science center in the remote
desert. The observatory’s
subterranean living quarters
were used as a Bond villain’s lair
in the 2008 movie Quantum of
Solace. The site’s new Extremely
Large Telescope is costing
$1.1 billion (€1 billion) to build.
The ESO opted for this project
after rejecting the far costlier
OWL (Overwhelmingly Large
Telescope), the proposed design
of which had a 330-ft (100-m)
wide primary mirror.