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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 pair
2000 - 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)