Extremely Large Telescopes

The Big Eye at Palomar was started in 1928 and dedicated in 1948. It took until the 1990's for the generation of 8 meter class telescopes to start coming on line, beginning with the two Kecks, then the first VLT to be followed by the two Gemini's, the MMT upgrade, the LBT, Hobby-Eberly, Magellan, etc. Even though the 8 meter generation will not be completed until around 2005, people are already beginning to think about Extremely Large Telescopes (ELT's) in the 30 to 100 meter class.

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Some ELT Projects:

• The Canada-France-Hawaii Next Generation CFHT Committee (NGC) have recommended that their next project be a 25 meter or greater ground based telescope, diffraction limited using adaptive optics. The report has no discussion of engineering and recommends an immediate start on a phase A study.

• The AURA ACCORD committee sponsored the MAXAT Workshop in August 1998. The report discusses the scientific case for an ELT along with some of the technical challenges.

• An Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) has been discussed at ESO with considerable details on the technology.

• The Swedish Extremely Large Telescope Project is examining the design of a 50 meter, diffraction limited telescope.

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A Workshop on Extremely Large Telescopes sponsored by ESO and by the Swedish Extremely Large Telescope Project was held in Sweden on June 1-2, 1999.

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