Telescope wins Best Ever Name competition
Today's Sunday Age reports:
Unlike the orbital Hubble telescope, the new device will be placed somewhere improbably remote on earth. Suggestions have included Tibet, Chile, Greenland or a 3000-metre plateau in Antarctica intriguingly named "Dome C".
Its purpose is to detect life on other planets within the cosmos, peering far beyond the limits to which astronomers are currently bound. It is a noble undertaking, a project and concept that has the potential to reveal ever more astonishing secrets of the universe and as such deserves a suitably impressive name.
With this in mind, these interstellar frontiersmen and women - frontierspeople if you will - have sifted through the annals of history and mythology to create a name befitting this most impressive of telescopes.
And it shall be called.
*drumroll*
The Extremely Large Telescope
Yes, that's right. The Extremely Large Telescope (or ELT for those in the know) will take the place of the current whopper based in southern Europe - The Very Large Telescope and this is only because they have had to abandon their plans to erect an enormous orbital device, with the brilliant acronym OWL.
Can you guess what OWL stands for? Go on, guess...
OWL, of course, stands for Overwhelmingly Large Telescope.
Just. Brilliant.
"ASTRONOMERS want to build a 42-metre telescope that could reveal whether life exists anywhere else in the cosmos.
The [telescope] being proposed by scientists from a consortium of European countries based at the Cerro Paranal observatory in Chile's Atacama desert will dwarf anything astronomers use today. It could be used to tackle mysteries such as what the first objects in the universe were."
Unlike the orbital Hubble telescope, the new device will be placed somewhere improbably remote on earth. Suggestions have included Tibet, Chile, Greenland or a 3000-metre plateau in Antarctica intriguingly named "Dome C".
Its purpose is to detect life on other planets within the cosmos, peering far beyond the limits to which astronomers are currently bound. It is a noble undertaking, a project and concept that has the potential to reveal ever more astonishing secrets of the universe and as such deserves a suitably impressive name.
With this in mind, these interstellar frontiersmen and women - frontierspeople if you will - have sifted through the annals of history and mythology to create a name befitting this most impressive of telescopes.
And it shall be called.
*drumroll*
The Extremely Large Telescope
Yes, that's right. The Extremely Large Telescope (or ELT for those in the know) will take the place of the current whopper based in southern Europe - The Very Large Telescope and this is only because they have had to abandon their plans to erect an enormous orbital device, with the brilliant acronym OWL.
Can you guess what OWL stands for? Go on, guess...
OWL, of course, stands for Overwhelmingly Large Telescope.
Just. Brilliant.
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