Building the telescope of the future

This image shows a site which will soon be awash with activity as a game is played to produce a 1:1 scale model of the 39 metre primary mirror of the Extremely Large Telescope. The game was organised and played at the Osservatorio Astrofisico di Asiago — Asiago Astrophysical Observatory — part of the University of Padua near Asiago, Italy.

The game was originally played during the 2011 Open House Day at the ESO headquarters in Garching, Germany and uses 800 hexagonal pieces of card — each 1.4 metres in diameter — to represent each of the mirrors that together make up the huge primary mirror.