The Euro50 Extremely Large Telescope

Abstract:
Euro50 is a proposed optical telescope with an equivalent primary mirrordiameter of 50 m. Partners of the collaboration are institutes inSweden, Spain, Ireland, Finland, and the UK. The telescope will have asegmented primary mirror and an aplanatic Gregorian configuration withtwo elliptical mirrors. For a 50 m telescope there would be noeconomical advantage in going to a spherical primary. The size of theprimary mirror segments (2 m) has been selected on the basis of aminimization of cost. An adaptive optics system will be integrated intothe telescope. The telescope will have three operational modes: Seeinglimited observations, single conjugate adaptive observations in theK-band, and dual conjugate observations also in the K-band. An upgradeto adaptive optics also in the visible down to 500 nm is foreseen. Therewill be an enclosure to protect the telescope against adverse weatherand wind disturbances. Integrated simulation models are underdevelopment. The project time will be 10 years and the cost some 591MEuros.