The Euro50 Extremely Large Telescope

Euro50 is a proposed optical telescope with an equivalent primary mirror diameter of 50 m. Partners of the collaboration are institutes in Sweden, Spain, Ireland, Finland, and the UK. The telescope will have a segmented primary mirror and an aplanatic Gregorian configuration with two elliptical mirrors. For a 50 m telescope there would be no economical advantage in going to a spherical primary. The size of the primary mirror segments (2 m) has been selected on the basis of a minimization of cost. An adaptive optics system will be integrated into the telescope. The telescope will have three operational modes: Seeing limited observations, single conjugate adaptive observations in the K-band, and dual conjugate observations also in the K-band. An upgrade to adaptive optics also in the visible down to 500 nm is foreseen. There will be an enclosure to protect the telescope against adverse weather and wind disturbances. Integrated simulation models are under development. The project time will be 10 years and the cost some 591 MEuros.