Grand visions

The world has embarked on a new space race. But rather than competing to send men to the Moon, scientists and astronomers from Europe and the US are racing to develop the next generation of ground-based, super-sized telescopes that could chart the most distant reaches of our galaxy.

Last month, scientists from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Garching, Germany, launched the science case for the design and development of a telescope that will dwarf all others. ESO is an intergovernmental organisation designed to provide research facilities for European astronomers, and is pushing for funding bodies and governments to loosen the purse strings enough to fund the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

The power of a telescope is necessarily limited by the size of the mirror that collects light. The bigger the mirror, the fainter the objects in space it can detect. According to the group of more than 100 ESO astronomers and scientists, the science case for a huge telescope with a light-capturing mirror of 50–100m diameter is overwhelming.