The E-ELT laser guide stars at work (artist’s impression)

Artist's impression of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) in its enclosure on Cerro Armazones during night-time observations. The four beams shooting skywards are lasers that create artificial stars high in the Earth’s atmosphere. These form part of a sophisticated system to correct for turbulence and create much sharper images. The 40-metre-class E-ELT will be the largest optical/infrared telescope in the world — the world's biggest eye on the sky. Operations are planned to start early in the next decade, and the E-ELT will tackle some of the biggest scientific challenges of our time.

The design for the E-ELT shown here was published in 2011 and is preliminary.