Unboxing mirror segments

After a journey of more than 10,000 km by sea and by land, the first 18 segments of the main mirror of ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) have arrived at our Paranal Observatory in Chile from Europe.

With the segments at Paranal, the next phase in this intricate process involves the coating of the mirror segments in the ELT Technical Facility to give them their highly reflective finish — a process that will be reiterated on each segment every 18 months once the ELT begins observations.