The Extremely Large Telescope is the gigantic 39-m telescope that ESO is building right now on Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama desert close to the Paranal Observatory. Together with the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), this will be the next generation of ground-based optical/infrared telescopes. All of them will have adaptive optics built in from the start with between six and eight laser guide stars for atmospheric tomography. The baseline laser system for all of them is the TOPTICA SodiumStar 20/2. Production for the ELT has already begun.
Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
