E-ELT gets off the ground

On June 2014, an explosion disturbed the silence of the Acatama Desert in Chile. Part of the 3000-metre peak of Cerro Armazones was blasted away in order to prepare a level platform that will host ESO’s European Extremely Large Telescope [E-ELT], the largest optical/infrared telescope in the world.
The Atacama Desert is one of the favourite places for astronomers because of its exceptional conditions: the extremely arid mountain region, that is far away from any source of light pollution, offers a clear sky most of the time. This environment, chosen as the location for the future E-ELT, will also present new…