| Description: | After building the Very Large Telescope consisting of four 8-meter telescopes ESO has set a new goal to build the European Extremely Telescope. After previous studies (e.g. OWL and EURO-50), in the next three years a detailed study will be made of a 40-meter class optical telescope. The estimated cost will be around 800 million Euro and if all goes well the E-ELT will be ready in 2017. Today's image shows an artist impression how the telescope might look like. Of course also instrumentation is needed and yes, the optical group of ASTRON is already involved in a conceptual design study of MIDIR - the MID-InfraRed Instrument. MIDIR is a combined imager and spectrograph covering a wavelength from 3 to 27 microns. Soon we will let you know more about MIDIR. |
