The largest telescope that will ever be built*

How he dumbing it down n I still feel stupid 😂

What if we put a network of extremely small drones in the atmosphere between the telescope and the observation point? Could they communicate the differences in their relative positions to augment the laser atmospheric corrections? (Obviously big quadcopters would not work in the upper atmosphere—I’m thinking smaller than that.)

The network latency would be too slow to make microsecond adjustments, but maybe the micro drones could measure humidity, turbulence, and other variables at different altitudes that could enhance image correction post capture if the light gathered during the exposure is time stamped and synchronized with time-stamped data collected by the drones.

i like the honest advert and everything i just watched

largest telescope*

*optical telescope

for now

Put telescopes at Earth lagrange points and coordinate them... now you have a functional telescope about 2 million miles across (yep, way easier to say than do).

There is so much information in this video!
It's like trying to digest a couple of 72 oz steaks from Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas!! 🥩😮🥩

Nice to get know that humanity civilization is busy not just with destroying itself :)

Blows me away that there are humans who can figure this out and build such amazing machines.
They are the virtuosos of discovery, design and construction.

He kept mentioning the asterisk like I have any idea what putting one there actually indicates.

Why is the new Magellan telescope finished in 2029 not the largest optical telescope.??

If we weren't so preoccupied with war we could afford to put a tens of OWL telescopes around the world.....

I LOVE TELESCOPES! But not like in the past when I dreamed that there may be aliens out there. Not any more. I know that whoever started life had to have the ultimate brain.

Why did that guy's helmet look like it was on backwards?

But the constant giggling was a bit much annoying!

Thank you for making this program Tom, very interesting to me personally as I love telescopes of every kind and the science behind them!

I was kinda disappointed with that size...

WHY NOT just build 1,000 smaller telescopes side by side all looking at the same spot? When a telescope needs to be adjusted it will not effect the entire project. Smaller, cheaper, easier to manage, easier to manufacture, easier to expand ... why not ??? TM

I love his exuberant enthusiasm on all these truly amazing things he got shown there.

"That is the Extremely Large Telescope!"

Not yet. Come back when it's done and say that!

If they didn't want people to even get close to a certain line, then they should have marked a hedge line that people could get right up to but not cross!

"When people used to tape songs off of radio"? Then what were they "taping" the songs FROM?

Oh my gosh, you're even above the clouds, wow!

Holy cow, that coating is just about 1000 atoms of (whatever element) thick? Wow, DANG!

"This is what we call..."? Why not just use the official term directly?

So if they do wash the mirror thoroughly, why do they also supposedly need to recoat it?

"...Also changing as well"? Heh, oops.

OK, optical. Then why didn't you just put "optical" in the title instead of an asterisk and saying there would have to be one?

Tom, you said "University dorms... [something...] architectural..." what?

how will they clean the mirror surface of the ELT?

crazy stuff, just crazy

Acc. to Wikipedia the primary mirror was originally planned to be 42 meters and the secondary mirror 5,9 meters. But 2011 they reduced the primary mirror to 39,3 meters and the secondary mirror to 4,2 meter. Is that correct?

You get the feeling the science community been ordered to move away from Adamsesque names/parameters....I mean, FCC "Future Circular collider"...

they do MATH !

This is one of the best, or even the best documentation regarding VLT. Great job done!

Musk Satellites are gonna block it's views so you're building it for nothing.

Isn't China building a 12m optical?

Is this the cousin of the reasonably sized telescope?

Thank - you . ( 2023 / Nov / 18 )

I can imagine them building another several ELTs and using the same type of optical system that links the VLTs to set up interferometry between those.
That is, if they have the space and funds, both of which may well be hard to find.

Long ago it was discovered that the resolution of a telescope could be increased ~1.5X by blocking all but a peripheral ring, but apparently that knowledge has been lost to time. Is there some rational reason that hasn't been done there in Chile?

"Radio waves, not light"
Radio waves are light.

Amazing... 😮

The title and conclusion is 100% false. Without bigger telescopes more precise astronomic measurements are impossible. "Parametric Cost Model for Ground and Space Telescopes" assumes cost ~ D^1.7 where D = diameter. A 100 meter telescope will cost less than sending clowns to the Moon, killing Russians or other idiotic projects.

These telescopes bear no relation to what we think of when we hear the word "telescope ". Palomar left me speechless.

Props to the other guy with the Space hoodie on

Well isn't a radio wave just a different wavelength of light?

"That's not the ocean by the way, those are clouds" made my say Woah out loud. Love it when a video entirely about 1 amazing thing drops a snippet of another right in the middle, and to stunning visual effect no less.