What is the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope?
The Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) is a concept design by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to create a $1.2 billion USD telescope with a 100 meter (328 ft) lens, which would the largest optical telescope ever built. The scale has since been decreased to a 60 meter (200 ft) lens. The target date for completion is around 2019, and the plains east of Antofagasta, Chile are being considered for the site, due to its year-round clear skies and high altitude. If completed, OWL would be able to observe objects 1000 times fainter than the Hubble Space Telescope. Although some interferometry projects will have a greater angular resolution than OWL, it will have greater light-gathering and imaging capacity, allowing for sharper pictures of faint and distant astronomical objects. Because there is no technology in existence to make a 60 meter lens, any lens for this purpose would have to be segmented. To get an idea of why it is called the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope, imagine a mirr
