Extremely Large Telescope

UK involvement in the ELT

Science

The ELT will be the world's leading optical/IR facility for decades to come, delivering scientific discoveries that will surpass our imagination and tackling some of the biggest questions in physics. The ELT will provide a huge gain in telescope collecting area compared to current facilities. When combined with exquisite image quality from adaptive optics, it will deliver unrivalled imaging and spectroscopy to address a broad range of science topics, from direct imaging of exoplanets to studies of the first galaxies in the Universe. See the ELT science pages at ESO for more information.

The ELT science case presents some of the revolutionary science which the ELT will deliver. This has been developed by a substantial part of the the European astronomical community, with important contributions from UK astronomers. Some of the technical details of simulations and peformances are available from the pages from the ELT Design Reference Mission.

Now well into the ELT the construction phase, ESO is supported by an advisory working group, the ELT Project Science Team (PST); the current UK members are Prof. Isobel Hook (Lancaster) and the PI of HRMONI Prof. Niranjan Thatte. The ELT Project Scientist has also created the ELT Working Groups to work with ESO to define various elements in support of ELT science operations.