European Southern Observatory, Chile

Описание: The Current ESO Very Large Telescope array at Paranal, Chile. The World's Largest Telescope Project, the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), was approved on June 11th, 2012. The E-ELT will be a 129-foot (39-meter) segmented-mirror telescope sited atop a mountain close to ESO's Paranal Observatory. It will be many times more sensitive than any other instrument of its kind, researchers said.

The VLT is an array of four "Unit Telescopes", each with a main mirror of 8.2 metres in diameter. With one such telescope, images of celestial objects as faint as magnitude 30 have been obtained in a one-hour exposure. This corresponds to seeing objects that are four billion times fainter than those seen with the naked eye.
The VLT also has four additional 1.8-metre moveable Auxiliary Telescopes. One of the most exciting features of the VLT is the option to use it as a giant optical interferometer (VLT Interferometer or VLTI). This is done by combining the light from several of either the Unit Telescopes or Auxiliary Telescopes. In this interferometric mode, the telescope has a vision as sharp as that of a telescope the size of the separation between the most distant mirrors. For the VLTI with the Auxiliary Telescopes, this is up to 200 metres.

NASA Source For Intro Video: ftp://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov//pub/xfr/VLT_atacama_HD_timelapse.mp4
European Southern Observatory: http://www.eso.org/public/about-eso/e...
World's Largest Telescope Project Gets Green Light: http://www.space.com/16115-worlds-lar...
Construction of World's Largest Telescope Begins in 2012: http://www.space.com/14073-worlds-lar...
ESO Movie 27: Astronomy from Planet Earth: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/esoe...
ESO Vídeos: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/
ESO Images: http://www.eso.org/public/images/
ESO Usage of images, videos and web texts: http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/co...
Astronomer's Paradise ~ Atacama Starry Nights Timelapse:    • Видео  
Stacking Up the 10 Biggest Telescopes on Earth: http://www.space.com/14075-10-biggest...