![]() ![]() That last factor will be crucial in limiting the size of jumbo telescopes. The reasons boil down to cost (unsurprisingly), engineering and the implacability of geometric laws. It will be by far the largest visible and infrared light telescope on-or above-the planet.ĮLT may as well be the biggest that will ever be built. Several enormous telescopes are currently under construction, including the Giant Magellan Telescope (which has seven 8.4-meter mirrors, adding to an equivalent single mirror 22 meters across) in Chile and the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawai’i.Īnd, right now, the beefiest telescope under construction is the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope, or ELT, which, upon completion in 2028, will be a staggering 39 meters across. On Earth there are telescopes far larger the Very Large Telescope in Chile has an 8.2-meter mirror, whereas the twin Keck Telescopes in Hawai’i are each a gargantuan 10 meters wide. Of course, these telescopes were launched to space on rockets, a process that puts its own limits on how hefty a scope can be. Even the newer JWST, now taking images evoking gasps similar to Hubble’s, has a mirror that’s 6.5 meters wide, which only puts it in medium-to-big territory among astronomers. That may surprise you, since after three decades of taking images with depth and detail most ground-based telescopes couldn’t achieve, popular conception holds that Hubble must be one of the biggest telescopes ever built.īut its mirror is only 2.4-meters wide. ![]() Consider this: Astronomers think of the Hubble Space Telescope as small.
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