Giant optical telescopes - in the far or the near future?

by Göran Olofsson (Astronomy, SU)

Thursday 3 Jun 2004, 10:00 → 11:00 Europe/Stockholm

The first telescope in the 10 m class (Keck I on Hawaii) become operational 12 years ago and since then, a number of very large telescopes have joined (among them the four 8 m telescopes run by ESO in Chile). This new generation of telescopes in combination with improved instrumentation has pushed the limits in essentially all fields of astronomy. This success has encouraged people to study the possibility of constructing even larger telescopes - indeed ESO seems serious about a goal of a 100 m telescope.

Is this really realistic? What are the most important difficulties? What kind of scientific drivers would justify such an enormous effort?

These are some of the questions I will discuss.