The project for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will be undertaken by Consortium ACe, comprising Astaldi (65%) and Cimolai (35%), working with astronomy and astrophysics specialist EIE Group.
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) will now enter into final negotiations with Consortium ACe with the aim of signing the contract in May.
The new telescope will be built in Chile on the Cerro Armazones, in the central part of the Atacama desert at an altitude of 3,000m above sea level. It will have a focusing capacity that is 100,000,000 times greater than the human eye and will gather more light than all of the most important telescopes to date on the planet, which have primary mirrors measuring 8m to 10m in diameter compared to the 39.3m-diameter of the new E-ELT.
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