ann24001 — Annuncio
First segments of ELT’s main mirror arrive in Chile
16 Gennaio 2024: After a 10 000 km journey across the world, the first mirror segments of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) have safely arrived in their next home, the ELT Technical Facility at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert. A total of 18 segments (out of 798) of the telescope’s main mirror (M1) successfully made the trip from Europe to South America, first arriving in Chile at the Antofagasta Terminal International (ATI) port last week. Once complete, the ELT’s M1 will be over 39 metres across, making it the world’s largest eye on the sky. Such scale means that the mirror can’t be cast in one piece, thus, 798 hexagonal segments will work together to form M1. An additional 133 will be produced to facilitate the segments’ recoating. Embarking on a remarkable voyage that began near Poitiers, France, where the ELT segments were finished, they then traveled by road to ...
