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 Last
modified:
12.03.2007
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THE ELT DESIGN STUDY
A technology development programme towards the European Extremely Large Telescope
Sponsored by the European Commission within Framework Programme 6 |
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All over the world astronomers are keen to unravel the mysteries
of the Universe. The present generation of 8-10 m class telescopes,
like the ESO VLT, is in full operation and a new generation
of so-called Extremely Large Telescopes (ELT in short) with
diameters of ~30m or more is actively being prepared. These
future giant instruments, including hopefully a European
ELT, will come on line by 2015 or later. They will tackle
the scientific challenges of their time, including peering
at the 'dark ages' of our Universe - its first billion years
- and tracking down earth-like planets in their habitable
zones.
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As one can imagine, the task to build an ELT is not a trivial
one. Extrapolating technical solutions for light collectors
from 10m diameter to 30m or more while keeping an exquisite
image quality in sizable fields is a major challenge. The
ELT Design Study is conducted by European scientific institutes
and high-tech companies to establish the enabling technologies
needed to make them feasible at an affordable cost within
the next 5-10 years.
...read more!
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| ACTIVITIES |
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The work planned to be done in the ELT Design Study framework
has been broken down by the various technological areas ("Tasks"),
with well defined activities ("Work Packages") planned
under each Task. It covers a huge variety of challenging technologies,
e.g. manufacturing and aligning hundreds of mirrors with 10
nm accuracy and developing sophisticated adaptive optics systems
able to cancel in real time the image fuzziness created by
atmospheric turbulence.
...read more!
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| THE
CONSORTIUM |
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To conduct the ELT Design Study, 30 partners decided to join
forces in the ELT-DS Consortium, coordinated by ESO. Partners
are either scientific institutes or industrial companies,
mostly located in Europe.
...read more!
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| JOB
OPPORTUNITIES |
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Looking for a challenging job in a fascinating project?
...read more!
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