E-ELT for European Extremely Large Telescope

[Plane]

http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/e-elt/

Superb instrument and impressive as a thing can be.


Three guesses which continent will it be located on.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am guessing Chile.

There is no place on Earth where the atmosphere is so clear and there are never any clouds as the Atacama Desert.

It is so dry that they can dig up llama wool garments that were buried 1000 years ago and they are in almost perfect condition. There are places where they have found the footprints of the Spanish Conquistadores.

[Plane]

You are completely correct!

It is planned for a Chilean mountaintop.


Chilean researchers get 10% of it's time.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The Atacama Desert is the driest place on the planet. There is no record of rainfall i some parts of it. Occasionally, there is a bit of early morning dew or fog. Antofagasta gets .5 inches of rainfall per year. In addition, there is not enough wind to blow dust about, and the plateau rather high, so there is less atmosphere to gaze through.

The EC is not noted for awesome names. There are around 30 languages spoken, and official names tend to be in English, which most do not speak as a native language.

[Plane]

Is English the most popular second language?

Lingua Franca used to be French.

Is English the language of business?

[Xavier_Onassis]

English is the official language of the EC. The French did not wish to learn German, and the Germans did not to wish to learn French, and English was the favored second language of both. And they chose Brussels for the HQ, where the official languages are Flemish and Walloons, the local versions of  Dutch and French. When the Flemish speak with the Walloons, they generally use English.