The European Southern Observatory’s Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) was designed to be a $1.2 billion telescope with a 100-meter lens, but the scale has been reduced to 60 meters. It would be able to observe objects 1000 times fainter than the Hubble Space Telescope and would be located in the lowlands east of Antofagasta, Chile. However, due to its enormous size, cost, and complexity, it is not a priority for ESO, which is currently focusing on the European Extremely Large Telescope. OWL or something similar will surpass space observatories as the world’s largest windows into space using adaptive optics.
The Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) is a concept design by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to create a $1.2 billion telescope with a 100-meter (328-foot) lens, which would be the largest optical telescope ever built . The scale has since been reduced to a target of 60 meters (200 feet). The expected completion date is around 2019, and the lowlands east of Antofagasta, Chile were under consideration for the site, due to its year-round clear skies and high altitude.
If completed, OWL would be able to observe objects 1000 times fainter than the Hubble Space Telescope. While some interferometry designs will have higher angular resolution than OWL, it will have greater light-gathering and imaging capabilities, allowing for sharper images of faint and distant astronomical objects.
Since there is no technology to make a 60m target, any target for this purpose would have to be segmented. To get an idea of why it’s called the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope, imagine a mirror with a diameter the size of a 20-story building. Due to its enormous size, cost and complexity, it is not surprising that a feasibility review committee for ESO has decided that OWL should be pushed to the back burner of their priority list.
Although OWL may yet see the light of day, for the most part ESO is currently focusing on the European Extremely Large Telescope, a small-scale telescope with a 40-metre objective, costing around US$800 million (USD). This would still be precise enough to resolve the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, which would allow us to do spectroscopic analyzes to determine the possible presence of organic compounds.
Using a technique called adaptive optics, which has been developed to reduce atmospheric glare, OWL or something similar will surpass space observatories as the world’s largest windows into space. Because it is so expensive to launch payloads into space, and relatively cheaper to build a very large telescope on Earth, it is likely that it will dominate astronomy until launch costs are reduced.
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