The ELT grows on Cerro Armazones (I)

Artist´s impression of how Cerro Armazones, in the Atacama Desert, may look in 2011. Cerro Armazones was selected as the site for the planned Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), on 26 April 2010. The go ahead for ELT construction is expected in 2010, with the start of operations planned for early in the next decade. By the end of 2011, the top of the mountain should already have been flattened, in order to host the ELT platform. With its 40-metre-class diameter mirror, the ELT will be the largest optical/near-infrared telescope in the world. Cerro Armazones is a mountain at an altitude of 3046 metres in the II Region of Chile, some 130 kilometres south of the town of Antofagasta and about 20 kilometres away from Cerro Paranal, home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).