#Introduction Hi #fediverse ! We’re the European Southern Observatory, and we design, build and operate ground-based telescopes.
One of them is our Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction in #Chile. It will have a 39 m mirror, and its rotating enclosure will weigh 6100 tonnes, or about 700 mastodons!
We’re looking forward to chatting with all of you about #astronomy
📷 ESO/G. Vecchia
@esoastronomy
"Extremely Large Telescope" - full points for a descriptive name!
@jannem @esoastronomy you should read about the follow up, the Over Whelmingly Large telescope. OWL for short lol
I think it got canceled.
@esoastronomy @falken @jannem @troublewithwords The final final really final this time telescope (3).
@octothorpe @esoastronomy @falken @troublewithwords
Final_final_v2.3.edit_3.this_one_works2.telescope
Or, tell me you don't use git without telling me you don't use git.
🎶 It's the final Telescope dadada dadadada! 🎶
That's like frequency names:
High frequency
Very high frequency
Ultra high frequency
Super high frequency
Extremely high frequency
Tremendously high frequency
Really high frequency we're not kidding now
OK no shit this is the highest frequency
@Phosphenes @esoastronomy @falken @jannem Ah, let's invite the people behind the USB 3.2 specification to bring some clarity...
@esoastronomy @jannem If the ESO Expanding Horizons process (https://next.eso.org/) doesn't end up recommending the construction of the Oppressively Colossal Telescope or Mind-Numbingly Vast Telescope next then we're all going to be disappointed in your lack of commitment to the bit ;-)
@falken @jannem OWL actually came first, but after several studies we deemed it was too complex and risky, and we opted instead for the ELT, which is still quite a challenge! So OWL now means Originally Was Larger 😄 But yes, we fully embrace these extremely (pun intended) descriptive names, as xkcd brilliantly showed: https://xkcd.com/1294/