Overwhelmingly Large Telescope

Overwhelmingly Large Telescope
Overwhelmingly Large Telescope
OverWhelmingly Large Telescope.jpg
Organization European Southern Observatory
Wavelength Infrared, Visible light (0.32-12 µm)
Built 2017 .. 2019 (cancelled)
Telescope style Cassegrain, Coudé
Diameter 60 - 100m
Collecting area 2,827 - 7,854 m2
Focal length 175 m
Website http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/eelt/owl/

The Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) is a conceptual design by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) organization for an extremely large telescope, which was intended to have a single aperture of 100 meters in diameter. Because of the complexity and cost of building a telescope of this unprecedented size, ESO has elected to focus on the 39 meter diameter European Extremely Large Telescope instead.

While the original 100-m design would not exceed the angular resolving power of interferometric telescopes, it would have exceptional light-gathering and imaging capacity which would greatly increase the depth to which humankind could explore the universe. The OWL could be expected to regularly see astronomical objects with an apparent magnitude of 38; or 1,500 times fainter than the faintest object which has been detected by the Hubble Space Telescope.

All proposed designs for the OWL are variations on a segmented mirror, since there is no technology available to build a monolithic 60- or 100-meter mirror. The operation of a segmented mirror is somewhat more complicated than a monolithic one, requiring careful alignment of the segments (a technique called cophasing). Experience gained in existing segmented mirrors (for example, the Keck telescope) suggests that the mirror proposed for the OWL is feasible. However, the projected cost (of around €1.5 billion) was uncomfortably high, and the ESO is now working on a smaller European Extremely Large Telescope around 42 m in diameter.[1][2]

It has been estimated that a telescope with a diameter of 80 meters would be able to spectroscopically analyse Earth-size planets around the 40 nearest sun-like stars.[3] As such, this telescope could help in the exploration of extrasolar planets and extraterrestrial life (because the spectrum from the planets could indicate the presence of molecules indicative of life).


See also

References

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Overwhelmingly Large Telescope — (OWL) war der Arbeitstitel einer Teleskopstudie der Europäischen Südsternwarte (ESO). Nachdem es schon ein Very Large Telescope (engl. für Sehr Großes Teleskop, kurz VLT) gibt und ähnliche Bezeichnungen wie „Extremely Large Telescope“ (Extrem… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Overwhelmingly Large Telescope — (vue d artiste) L Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (abrégé en OLT ou bien OWL, qui signifie « hibou » en anglais), ou en français « télescope extrêmement grand », est un projet de l Observatoire européen austral (ESO) visant à… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • OverWhelming Large Telescope — Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) war der Arbeitstitel einer Teleskopstudie der Europäischen Südsternwarte (ESO). Nachdem es schon ein Very Large Telescope (engl. für Sehr Großes Teleskop, kurz VLT) gibt und ähnliche Bezeichnungen wie… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Very Large Telescope — VLT redirects here. For other uses, see VLT (disambiguation). Very Large Telescope The four Unit Telescopes that form the VLT together with th …   Wikipedia

  • Extremely large telescope — An extremely large telescope (ELT) is a telescope of more than 20 m diameter. [See title of http://www.astro opticon.org/fp5/skelcase.html and section 1 of http://www.aao.gov.au/instrum/ELT/ELTroadmap040917.pdf] There are currently ten such… …   Wikipedia

  • European Extremely Large Telescope — Infobox Telescope bgcolour = name = European Extremely Large Telescope (E ELT) caption = organization = ESO location = Probably Chile or Roque de los Muchachos at the Canary Islands coords = altitude = weather = wavelength = Optical, near… …   Wikipedia

  • European Extremely Large Telescope — Vue d artiste de l’European Extremely Large Telescope. Caractéristiques Organisation …   Wikipédia en Français

  • European Extremely Large Telescope — Vergleich einer Studie zum 39 m E ELT mit einem Unit Telescope des Paranal Observatoriums mit 8,2 m Spiegel Durchmesser …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Telescope — A telescope is an instrument designed for the observation of remote objects and the collection of electromagnetic radiation. The first known practically functioning telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 17th century …   Wikipedia

  • Optical telescope — Eight Inch refracting telescope (Chabot Space and Science Center) An optical telescope is a telescope which is used to gather and focus light mainly from the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum for directly viewing a magnified image for… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”