Extremely Large Telescope - Deep Sky Videos

We're on the peak where ESO plans to build the E-ELT - the European Extremely Large Telescope.
Later descriptions from Mike Merrifield (University of Nottingham) and Paul Crowther (University of Sheffield).
ESO's page for the E-ELT: www.eso.org/public/teles-instr...
Deep Sky Videos website: www.deepskyvideos.com/
Twitter: #!/DeepSkyVideos
Facebook: / deepskyvideos
Video by Brady Haran (sorry for my rubbish pronunciation in Chile!!!)

[@Thunderf00t]

I gotta be one of the few nerds who would just love to walk around on that bleak summit in the middle of nowhere. Luved it!!

[@Zerepzerreitug]

this nerd agrees :)

[@thesunexpress]

Same here.

[@StarrDust0]

you're not alone buddy, I'd love to be up there also.

[@Shinzon23]

I would find it fascinating to use as a sniper perch with a Intervention and a few dozen crates of ammunition

[@StarrDust0]

@@Shinzon23 lol

[@pifdemestre7066]

The next one is of course the Super Massively Atrociously Ludicrously Large telescope.

[@markanderson1088]

Can’t wait for SMALL telescope

[@evertonporter7887]

My Skywatcher 127 mak would be an ant compared to the Extremely Large Telescope LOL.

[@nasaspaceobserver7977]

Well played.

[@st0rmforce]

When are we going to have the Bloody Large Telescope. BLT

[@SyntheticFuture]

st0rmforce when britain has more money to spare ;)

[@IMortage]

+ThaTyger So never then?

[@isaiahphillip4112]

Shortly after they build the Latest Gargantuan Big Telescope.

[@jamesdriscoll9405]

All of these fit inside the Massive Astronomically Gigantic Observatory

[@tigersharkzh]

OWL, not BLT. It will be the overwhelmingly large telescope. there were already plans to build it but it was downsized due to costs and renamed ELT.

[@indieingenuity7160]

I lived in Chile. The Atacama Desert is the driest place on Earth. Very high with hardly any contaminants in the atmosphere. It is the best location for a telescope. I can't wait until they get it built!

[@freshofftheufo]

Another great one Brady. It gives me goosebumps to think what kind of science we might be hearing about from this telescope 10 years from now!

[@oldmech619]

The ELT is under construction and it may be done in 2027. Just noted your comment was nine years ago.

[@marlenemcgovern808]

Thankyou Brazil for signing up! Really excited about E- ELT!!

[@FrancoCiminoPrado]

I'm so exited to see how all the locations will look once they are all ready.

[@chronoflect]

Those are some sexy concept animations. Can't wait until the ELT is made and we can get a closer look at the atmospheres on extra-solar planets!

[@rogerdotlee]

You sound winded up there, Brady. Thanks for the tour. I can't wait until we can start getting pictures from ELT combined with the new Webb telescope.

[@guapo492]

Very cool. The possibilities of new discoveries are exciting!

[@longcastle4863]

Just checked. As of Jan 2021 the ELT is currently still under construction. Competition date estimated to be in 2025.

[@jsd1982]

I sure hope they build the Really Really Ridiculously Large Telescope in my lifetime.

[@Zerepzerreitug]

I look forward to the _Oppressively Colossal Telescope_ and the _Cataclysmic Telescope_. And then, one day, astronomers will build an unspeakable _device_ which will be simply named: _The Final Telescope_ (xkcd.com/1294/)

[@GabrielKozsar]

LOL this made my day :D

[@xuxamelo]

not sure about that lol

[@fukemnukem1525]

Such a cool video. Thank You for showing this. I love it!

[@carlJazzBass]

Just amazing! Thanks for this post!!

[@Rocky_Intertidal]

Great video. With the E-ELT (39-meters) in the southern hemisphere and the TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope) on Mauna Kea in the northern hemisphere, there will be full sky coverage with unprecedented power. Looking forward to the start of some really incredible science in the mid-twenties after these enormous light-buckets both see first light.

[@johnarizona3820]

That terrain would be perfect for finding meteorites so keep your eyes peeled. God bless you and your endeavors!

[@MrFlypy]

Amazing video!! So happy they chose Chile finally to build the ELT, I live here in Santiago and I am a photographer with a great interest in Astrophotography and astronomy, these places have always called me but im quite not sure how I could access them at night to take pictures unless it's for a designated job. Cheers!

[@whopperlover1772]

42 and extremely large telescope....most professional thing I have ever witnessed....

[@Cdubb1967]

Looks like it was a lot of fun! Exciting project also.

[@galenwarren3579]

I LIVED within a few hundred km of this. Couldn't get a visitor's pass. BUT, there are other peaks almost as high, and I spent several hours during several trips nearby with my dink 60x. Amazingly clear skies. Even with the cold of August, worth it!

[@paulfsemicolen01]

Very cool! Thanks for sharing your adventures Brady!!!

[@Pulsar77]

Astronomers do love funny acronyms. My favourite is the TRAPPIST telescope, which stands for TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope. It is, of course, a Belgian project :-)

[@1KevinsFamousChili1]

We need a Bloody Large Telescope :D

[@proteinsdreamingcodons3842]

Yeah... Europeans really like to name things with acronyms. You have to see how social, employment or infrastructure projects are sometimes called. :-)

[@MeisterHaar]

Proteins Dreaming Codons year like americans don't like to use acromnyms ;)

[@siwalder1618]

Such a good channel

[@IparIzar]

Oh Brady, you can't get Armazones right for your life but you nail Lluillallaco on your first try!

[@Chrismasterski]

damn, scientists come up with the most creative names for their equipment... very big telescope, extremely large telescope, large hadron collider...

[@jeffersonribeiro1669]

I was thinking the same xDDD

[@pumpuppthevolume]

super duper telescope

[@UncleKennysPlace]

Yeah, they could have just called it the BFT.

[@Nertez]

It's such a shame that awesome videos like this get only 10000 views...

[@studentjohn35]

Pity that you couldn't stay on the mountain after dark. If you did, you could have hauled a 10 inch dobsonian out of the back of the truck and called it the "moderately large telescope"

[@davidsweeney111]

very interesting video and information, thanks!

[@TheAmmoniacal]

Astronomy deserves an LHC-sized equivalent project!

[@Rilumai]

Awesome video.

[@pipertripp]

The most impressive thing about this is just how insanely dry that desert is. No visible plant life to be seen anywhere. Makes the American Southwest look like the Amazon Rain Forest. Amazing. The night sky must be absolutely incredible there.

[@Cristobalsekler]

Im from Chile and trust me, it is, you can see the whole nebula on any given night, it's pretty amazing.

[@shawnthompson3931]

I watched a documentary about that desert and they said some places in it haven't seen rain for billions of years. What an amazing place!

[@Kalumbatsch]

+Shawn Thompson Billions of years? Very unlikely.

[@pipertripp]

+Shawn Thompson wouldn't be billions... but it has been at least a few centuries. =)

[@XPimKossibleX]

i'm looking forward to SA-AEISLT - south asian amazingly extremely incomparably slightly larger telescope in the future.

[@kreiti8786]

michael benzur It would be funny, but won't happen...

[@canuzzi]

Unfortunately the atmospheric conditions in South Asia is quite bad for Telescopes - I am not sure but China or Mongolia should have nice locations.

[@sergioelgueda7298]

With monsoons and typhoons, it is quite complicated to have a clear and clean sky, in that part of Asia. That factor is very important, to locate the astronomical observatories. The north of Chile has a very favorable climate for the study of space ...

[@ferrismesser]

Brady you’re everywhere!

[@trope584]

Thanks Brady

[@JonFrumTheFirst]

Eight years later, and it looks like they're working on the foundation.

[@tobigforyou]

Insanely cool!

[@TusharDeb]

I just recently learnt about the ELT and this video is from 2013. Sheesh!

[@willypataponk]

your videos are goddamn epic !

[@kazemainihadi]

I'm 31 and I can see the pictures from this gigantic telescope. This is gonna be awesome.

[@kachooy8984]

In 2017 they shortened the name to ELT. Site is in the Atacama Desert, Chile, on the top of Cerro Armazones.

[@Baamthe25th]

WHAT ? We can detect life with that ? I'm excited.

[@swedensy]

HE is just bulllshiting.

[@helvio89]

10 years later, the ELT is still planned to 2028😢

[@zapfanzapfan]

Quite good Mars-analogue you've got there ;-)

[@Zerepzerreitug]

Wow. This was such a gorgeous desolation :)

[@OsaSoft]

thats extremely impressive... And oh god, that scenery is so awesome... Reminds me of the pictures Curiosity sends from Mars...

[@felipeoyarzun5424]

Northern Chile is basically a Mars preview, there's even a "Valley of the Moon"

[@nicevideomancanada]

What's next? Hugely Gigantic Telescope? Gargantuan Telescope? The Mother of all Telescopes? My Telescopes Bigger than Your Telescope?

[@CC58]

+Peter Hall It has to be the Ludicrously Large Telescope to honor Mel Brooks.

[@nicevideomancanada]

THE END.

[@BlueEyesWhiteTeddy]

The MTBTYT, what a masterpiece.

[@HoyasBrasil]

As a Brazilian: DO IT BRAZIL! SIGN THE DOTTED LINE!! I WANT THE E-ELT!

[@AGH331]

Narrator from the future: "Brazil would not, in fact, join ESO. But the ELT was built nonetheless."

[@HoyasBrasil]

@@AGH331 I really appreciate this reply :) Thanks for the update from the future and let me just say that I can't wait until 2025 for first observations :)

[@rafafr9]

Man... Every day I wake up, and Im Brazilian. How the do you not sign the contract to be part of a project like this. Seriously, the admission fee is smaller then most of the world cup stadiums.

[@danielramirezcruz.2209]

Great video I love it thanks... thanks...

[@grandexandi]

exciting!

[@PinkChucky15]

I would love to visit there one day.

[@MartijnvandeStreek]

It really looks like the photos the Mars rovers are sending back up there :)

[@woolver42]

I can hear the tinfoil people already claiming Marsfraud.

[@katymaloney]

It always strikes me how much the Andes at that altitude has landscapes similar to those of Mars!

[@Quicksilver_Cookie]

Gotta love that lonely gate in a middle of a desert.

[@boludecesno2832]

Awesome. Do you guys think it would be possible to take a picture of ProximaB?

[@K1lostream]

When are they building the SYE (Size-You'd-Expect) telescope?

[@hortensiagatica2686]

E-ELT ES EQUIVALENTE A UNA PIRÁMIDE EGIPCIA, GRACIA VIDA POR PERMITIRME MARAVILLARSE DE ESTE GIGANTE.

[@IntellectualKetchup]

★ 10:59 Looks like a great place to film more fake mars landing footage. Devon Island has been working great for NASA's Mars rover fake footage. LOL I wrote this comment before he actually says that the area looks like Mars! I like how he drops a hint and says, "that martian ridge". Nice one!

[@felipeoyarzun5424]

Don't think too hard mate you could hurt yourself

[@UAPJedi]

Came here by complete accident, found interesting, subbed👍

[@jean-mariesand253]

Great !!!

[@spliter88]

Building EELT is one of the few things that a billion dollars is actually worth spending on. One thing I'm curious though, what's the advantage of building such a telescope on earth instead of having one in the orbit? (scientific advantage), Don't the orbiting telescopes have better view of the space? (not having to worry about the atmosphere and all that)

[@elowine]

Watch the Hubble Space Telescope video, it's on DeepSkyVideos somewhere. It answers your question ( I had the same one!) Basicly space telescopes cannot have very large mirrors so there field of view is quite narrow. They are great at zooming in to stars etc. to make detail images. But not very good at greating wide angle images. I bet a new Hubble telescope would be quite useful. A lot of progress had been made in creating better sensors in the last decade.

[@Saethlin]

Sort of, kinda. For optical astronomy with a ground-based system that uses active optics, the atmosphere isn't much of a problem, that's what active optics are for. Space telescopes are also incredibly expensive to build, launch, and maintain compared to a comparable ground-based system. That's why we're not launching an optical telescope into orbit, the James Webb is infrared.

[@Siggy152]

I think even though there is a clear downside to not have the telescope in orbit you can go much bigger on earth nullifiying that handicap and probably for maintenance reasons. Just guessing though.

[@Nan0bo7]

$$$ is the answer

[@IMortage]

We simply are not capable of building a telescope with a diameter of 20+ meters in space. If we could figure out how to do it (we just migth be able to) it would probably cost more than a hundred billion dollars.

[@Xo1ot1]

Will it be possible to combine the two telescopes somehow to make them even more efficient?

[@TheBandScanner]

I just watched an up to date video (2018) about ground telescopes. It says due to local protest, this one had to located in the Canary Islands after all.

[@camera4427]

Still waiting for the Stunningly Hugh International Telescope!

[@richardsilva-spokane3436]

Hahahahahahaha

[@darkenraja]

Is the telescope built so that they can add extra segments at a later date to add the extra power?

[@SpontaneousWhale]

It's like you were driving around mars! Very weird/cool

[@MrMichkov]

Is it possible to upgrade the EELT in the future by adding more hexagonal mirrors?

[@PepsiMagt]

No. The truss structure sets the limit

[@YurikArt84]

it'll be nice to see some of the images it takes

[@ohwell2790]

Oh! goody a 10 billion dollar picture, why not take two, that would not be to much more.

[@pduffy421]

It's now December 31 2020!!! Not long to go now...............

[@nofacee94]

Could you synchronise the VLT and the ELT and effectivelly combine the light collected by both of them (taking into account the 3d location of each telescopes), and A) getting higher resolution images and B) using them like a pair of eyes to get a better sense of depth?

[@ignaciot]

Technically it would be possible to make interferometry with VLT and EELT together, but it's not planned for the time being.

[@joshhyyym]

Not really, the VLT is already set up so it can be used as an interferometer (which allows it to be used a bit like one large telescope). However while interferometry is relatively common place with radio telescopes it is much, much more difficult in the optical region. In addition the light needs to be manipulated with very low tolerances, tolerances that are very difficult to achieve on close located purpose built observatories and really not feasible in other situations. In addition while the maximum resolution (the ability to distinguish two close by objects) is increased with aperture synthesis, the is still the problem of gathering enough light for the faint objects to be detected. Maybe (hopefully) the technical difficulties will be reduced in the near future and we'll see multiple large optical interferometers.

[@superdau]

A) the ELT will already have an mirror area more than five times that of all four of the VLT scopes combined. So not much to be gained there. Btw. for higher resolution the VLTs are combined optically to interfere through mirrors in the ground. I doubt this could be done over the distance to another mountain. B) At the distances of objects in space we are talking about, "stereoscopic" vision is of no use. Compare it to the eyes: beyond 5, maybe 10 meters almost all the depth perception is done by knowledge how big things should be and other hints like occlusion. At these distances one eye is as good as two. Rough estimate: 10 cm of eye distance gets you 10 m of stereoscopic vision. So 10km of telescope distance will get you 1000km of stereoscopic vision. You could argue the sensors are way more accurate, so times it by 1000. Still just 1 million km of "stereovision". Another example: the stellar parallax uses the orbit of the Earth for "stereovision", with half a year between the images. This method is still only good for measurements of a few thousand lightyears with the newest satelites.

[@rauc6788]

Who knew noface was an astronomy buff.

[@michaelalexander2306]

At least they know where ELT is going to be located. Can't say that for TMT yet. TMT4La Palma!

[@CocoaBeachLiving]

Baby steps.. Lol awesome stuff 👍👍

[@onecanina]

Brazil, please make me proud and get moving with this.

[@roxydzey]

brazil should invest money in their people lifes, because brazilians a lot of them lives in poor conditions :/ im amazed how government found that much money to donate.

[@guifrakss]

RoxyDzey,don't talk about things you don't understand.

[@DGPPhysics]

If depends of Brazil this telescope will never finish to be build,Brazilian government it's too corrupt to care about science,(don't expect less for a country that doesn't care for science,and find it unimportant,this is the why isn't a developed country ),the president didn't sign the decree since been approved by the senate in 2015,thanks to corruptions scandals the delay the country. I suggest ESO looking for some other Partner a serious one and not Brazil.

[@ohwell2790]

I suggest that these outrageous amounts of the peoples money should go for the peoples benefit, not a few people who spend most of their time on their back sides in an office. These telescopes cost more than many countries health care systems cost. But, then again people are cheap, wars prove that.

[@erictaylor5462]

I think if it was a choice of being sick at home, or sick visiting the E-ELT I'd choose the E-ELT.

[@moveaxebx]

People at VLT will hate people at E-ELT and will say that size doesn't matter.

[@knlshrvstv]

I see a johnnie walker red in Prof Mike Merrifield's office

[@gregdawe2786]

It saddens me that it takes a collaborative effort of multiple countries to raise a billion dollars for this yet there are people on earth that are multi-billionaires. sad world we live in.

[@gregdawe2786]

richest man 73 billion, next richest man, 63 billion, comon fuck this world

[@smaakjeks]

Greg Dawe Now look at the money spent on military power.

[@maw136]

Miliard Euros it's about 1.5 miliard dollars. Milliard is a proper name for 10^9

[@katymaloney]

Yep, and what do those billionaires do?! They finance private ventures like Planetary Ressources (a company whose claim is to "extend the human sphere of action to the solar system", as in plunder asteroids for profit.. but they'd rather you believe they're in it for the science and education value of their enterprise...) Indeed, sad sad world.

[@smaakjeks]

maw136 Not if writing in English. Nobody uses the native words for the numbers in currency. You use the number system of your own language, no matter the currency.

[@Pintuuuxo]

Please bring on that E-ELT, and do it fast. We had to wait years for spacecrafts to reach Saturn (Cassini), Pluto (New Horizons) and now Jupiter again (Juno). We are tired of waiting, folks!

[@alanmacbay2063]

Very Large Telescope ---> Extremely Large Telescope I feel like those people have just given up on coming up with names or acronyms

[@TilmanBaumann]

Funny that 39m is pretty much 42 yards

[@ohwell2790]

A meter is 39 inches figure it out.

[@dannygjk]

+Darrell Grisham 42 is a meme. It's a reference to Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy novels.

[@hologram70]

I don't care about them. I clicked this site to try and see deep space. What a burn.

[@MusicByNumbersUK]

Argh! :) you're on my centre channel again Brady! :) which would be fine but I often turn off the surround system and go back to stereo. Any chance you could start doing videos not in 5.1 and back in good old fashioned stereo at some point! ;) lol

[@blockchaaain]

That's just your setup. KZbin is only ever (ever) stereo.

[@MusicByNumbersUK]

I wish that was the case and this is what I believed too but Brady's new videos are the only ones that do it and only if you set your speakers to 5.1 (using the sound set up control panel). If you do this you'll find the codec Brady is now using outputs mono on the centre channel :) I think this is indicative that youtube are changing some things around and some how Brady has output with AC3 or something similar and set his editor to render out as 5.1 accidentally. I'm quite happy that youtube might be allowing multichannel videos up but not so happy to switch on my 5.1 system to get audio on Brady's channels (even though they are always worth it!) ;)

[@BlaiseIgirubuntu]

Ludicrously Large Telescope when?

[@Obi-WanKannabis]

42 meters... Overwhelmingly large telescope. This sense of humour is only found in astronomy It's not all serious. In other sciences it seems like everyone is a stick without any sense of humour, I never found a boring astronomer in my life.

[@smaakjeks]

Not at all true. What you don't hear about, you can't know about. That doesn't mean it isn't there. Look into some names for genes, for example. My favourite is a gene which halts development in animals. They call it the maggie gene (mge), after Maggie Simpson (who herself suffers from arrested development). Here's the study which describes this gene: www.genetics.org/content/156/1/229.full

[@Obi-WanKannabis]

true, I've also found a fungie called Spongebob Squarepants, in latin. Spongiforma squaripantsee. But I don't think a biologist would call a microscope "Overwhelmingly" It's more about it generally. Most names in biology just turn people off from it. Not in astronomy.

[@kennethflorek8532]

Physics has some chuckles. Gluons; quarks are red, green, blue and have charm and strangeness. This is called quantum chromo-dynamics. Nuclear cross-sections, which describe the ability to be hit, have units of barn-doors. There is the zero-th law of thermodynamics. Semiconductor devices are called chips. The tiny space something takes on a chip is called real estate. Information got to be measured in bits, and groups of information taken together eventually got called bytes, that's bites with a y. One common logic device is called a flip-flop. One way of arranging bytes is called little-endian and the opposite is big-endian.

[@blockchaaain]

Kenneth Florek There's plenty...but those aren't really humorous ones other than barn.

[@blockchaaain]

MrTURBOJOHN And don't forget the Sonic hedgehog protein and its inhibitor Robotnikinin

[@Tadesan]

I want to see more of Laura!

[@Matt-pr1xv]

I was hoping E-ELT would be extremely-extreme large telescope.

[@keeplookingup911]

It's a dream to visit this place. It's like "Holy place" for astronomy. 🔭

[@duncanwallace7760]

Probably a stupid question, but how does the scaffold style stuff holding up the secondary mirror not seriously obstruct the light coming in?

[@LeRoiJojo]

Really, really feels like Mass Effect.

[@KaaSerpent]

I think they should build a telescope called the Egregiously, Overwhelmingly Gigantic Telescope.

[@zcmini000]

Will these two telescopes being so close together help with observations? Meaning, will the VLT and E-ELT be able to take simultaneous observations and use their different positions to better detect the wobbling/dimming of stars from exoplanets, for example?

[@oceanwong4906]

Not really, since earth is so many light years away.

[@pressallbuttons751]

Ocean Wong has nothing to do with it.

[@DB-thats-me]

I was thinking along the same lines. If the VLT is a lot of small mirrors combined to make one large mirror, couldn't you hexagonally arrange 6 VLTs to make a pseudo mirror of even larger proportions?

[@w0ttheh3ll]

theoretically yes, but optical telescope interferometry is incredibly challenging technically. they're just now figuring out how to do it properly on the tens of meters scale, so it'll be a while

[@Drag0nfoxx]

@@DB-thats-me They already do that with the existing VLT UTs and ATs, it's called VLTI

[@hologram70]

They don't seem to care that many of their sites are near earthquake zones.

[@DeepSkyVideos]

Alan Baca they're pretty much across the earthquake issues

[@CC58]

+Alan Baca Lets hope the changes in weather due to Climate Change does not change the arrid region before its built.

[@Zhak7]

Mirrors are protected by giant airbags and the structure itself is also protected against earthquakes.

[@felipeoyarzun5424]

Don't worry, it's Chile, everything is earthquake proof since decades

[@zapfanzapfan]

Pretty good place to prepare for going to Mars :-)

[@pumpuppthevolume]

2013 hmm .....and the building begins now

[@PulseCanalVideos]

if there was a movie set on mars it would be filmed at that place :P

[@marianmusic7221]

@DeepSkyVideos Do you know the reason why the ELT wasn't built at a higher altitude? ALMA is built at over 5000 meters, also in Chile. That's about 66% higher than ELT. Isn't that altitude difference big enough to reflect on the quality of the images that ELT will take?

[@GregLoutsenko]

i thought this channel was finished?

[@1rspn]

OMG! Do not do an image search of EELT on Google atm. Thanks DeepSkyVideos

[@daveslave7858]

Hurry up and build it, im excited. On an other note can Brazil afford things like this, its not the greatest place you know.

[@PhilAEG]

Site testing tower looks a lot like the DOT - Dutch Open Telescope tower on ORM but without the lift... ESO rules ;-)

[@sMASHsound]

not sure when they will build the scopey mcscopey-face