Big bang makes way for 'world's biggest eye on the sky'

The victim of the decapitation was the 3 000-metre-high Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert. The perpetrator was the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The detonation aimed to blow away almost a million tonnes of rock and thus lower the mountain top by 40 metres. The resulting plateau will be the new perch for the E-ELT.

The European Extremely Large Telescope will be a single telescope with a primary mirror 39 metres across - four times larger than any other telescope yet constructed. The Guardian elaborated on the scale of the telescope: 'It will collect light about 15 times faster than any other telescope, and will create images 16 times sharper than even the Hubble Space Telescope.' It will allow us to make direct observations of nearby planets around other stars. As Euronews tells us: 'The E-ELT science team reckon they have a good chance of being the first to directly observe little blue dots like Earth, if they exist'.

The detonation in June was just a baby step in a massively ambitious project on difficult terrain that will take at least a decade to finish. The Cerro Armazones civil works to make way for the telescope started in March 2014 and are expected to take 16 months. These include the laying and maintenance of a paved road, the construction of the summit platform and the construction of a service trench to the summit.

ESO project manager Roberto Tamai tells Euronews that the building of the telescope in the Atacama desert - one of the driest and most remote areas on Earth - is nothing short of a 'total nightmare'. But the ESO knows what its getting into - it has a history of building telescopes with comically explicit names in this arid Chilean desert. The ESO's Paranal facility, also in Atacama, is home to the Very Large Telescope (VLT).

If VLT is a big project then E-ELT is a mega project. Its first light is planned for 2024 when, according to ESO, it will then take on the gargantuan task of tackling the biggest astronomical challenges of our time: 'The giant telescope is expected to allow the exploration of completely unknown realms of the Universe - it will be: "the world's biggest eye on the sky".'