The announcement earlier this month that approval has been granted for the construction of the world’s biggest optical and infra-red telescope — in Chile — will provide huge opportunities for the UK astronomy community and UK industry, according to the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

UK companies have already secured contracts worth more than £9 million for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), which will be located atop Cerro Armazones in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and the STFC says that this figure could increase at least 10-fold before construction is finished.

The council’s Professor Colin Cunningham, who is the UK E-ELT programme director, said: “This means that the contracting process can now begin for the ‘big-ticket’ items like the dome, the telescope’s main structure and the primary-mirror segments. The telescope will enable discoveries to be made at all scales of the universe, from measurements of life-marker gases in the atmospheres of exo-planets to understanding the birth and evolution of stars and galaxies.”

The University of Oxford’s Professor Niranjan Thatte, who leads the design and development of the Harmoni first-light instrument for the E-ELT, said: “The UK is leading the consortium that will build the first-light spectrograph for the E-ELT. Spectroscopy allows us to understand the physics of a wide range of astrophysical objects — from planets around other stars to the very first galaxies in the universe.

“UK astronomers are delighted that this flagship project is now under way. By allowing the faintest objects to be studied in exquisite detail, it will dramatically improve our understanding of the cosmos.”