Seeing the Universe
before 1610 - naked eye astronomy 1608 - Galileo's hand held telescopes 1673 - Hevelius' long telescopes 1780 - Herschel's large reflectors 1838 - Meridian Circles 1845 - Rosse's Leviathian 1890 - Barnard's camera 1923 - The Hooker 100 inch 1948 - The Palomar 200 inch 1990 - The Hubble Space Telescope 1998 - The Keck 10 metre pair2000 - The VLT array
2015 - Planning for the JWST 2020? - Planning the OWL How much further?
2000 The Very Large Telescope is located at the
European Southern Observatory (ESO) Paranal, Peru.
The VLT consists of four 8 metre unit telescopes.
When the observatory is finally complete, the four 8 m scopes and other moveable
2 metre scopes at the site will form an interferometric array that will be able to resolve
Saturn sized planets around nearby stars.
The VLT Home Page
The VLT array, Mt Paranal Chile, 1999 (ESA)