Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2020

23 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2020 rector of SENER Aeroespacial José Julián Echevarría. The ceremony was also attended by the Vice-Consul of Spain in Munich María Gonzalo Vil- lanueva, representatives from the Spanish Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology, the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, as well as by staff mem- bers of ESO and SENER Aeroespacial. With a primary mirror of 39-metre diameter, the ELT will be equipped with five mirrors in total. Two of them – M4 and M5 – form part of the adaptive optics system of the tel- escope. Their unique synergy will allow the ELT to take extremely high-quality and sharp images. A t a ceremony at ESO Headquar- ters in Garching, Germany on 29 November 2019, ESO signed a con- tract with SENER Aerospacial for the design and production of the cell for the M5 mirror of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). The contract was signed by ESO’s Director Gen- eral Xavier Barcons and the General Director of SENER Aeroespacial José Julián Echevarría. [ESO] Although the M5 mirror will be the smallest mirror on the telescope (2.7 by 2.2 metres), it will be the largest tip-tilt stabilised mirror in the world. The M5 cell includes a fast tip-tilt system for image stabilisation that will compensate perturbations caused by the telescope mecha- nisms, wind vibrations, and atmos- pheric turbulence. The ELT, which was approved for construction in 2014 by the ESO Council, is currently under construction on Cerro Arma- zones in the Chilean Atacama desert. The telescope will reside very close to ESO’s Paranal Observatory where ESO’s current flagship tele- scope the Very Large Telescope (VLT) is located. First light of the ELT is scheduled to take place in 2025. Once built it will be humanity’s big- gest eye on the sky. T his image shows a rendering of the M5 mirror and cell support structure that will be used on ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). De- signed and manufactured by SENER Aerospacial , the support cell struc- ture will have critical performances in terms of accuracy to ensure the sta- bility of the flat elliptical mirror M5. [SENER Aerospacial/ESO/L. Calçada] !