File Photo: The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) in its enclosure on Cerro Armazones, a 3060-metre mountaintop in Chile's Atacama Desert. (AFP Photo)
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has said that by 2020 Chile should host about 70 percent of the global astronomical infrastructure.
At a stone-laying ceremony on Tuesday to mark the start of construction work for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) in Vicuna, northern Chile, the president said the highly anticipated project will take astronomical research a giant step forward.
"To measure the magnitude of change, it is enough to know that during its first month of operation, the capacity of LSST will exceed what could previously be observed, if all existing telescopes were combined," said Bachelet.
The new LSST telescope will be built in the Cerro Pachon area, 532 km north of Santiago, and integrated into the network of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) active in Chile since the first great international observatory at Tololo hill became functional in 1961.
The new installation will be built around a telescope with a lens eight metres in diameter, and a camera taking three billion pixel images.
It will be used to observe and identify all manner of space objects, from supernovas to near-Earth asteroids, and map them all into a 3D cosmos.
"The technological leap will be revolutionary. The information that this telescope will provide will no doubt open new fields of research, new questions that will be answered by researchers from around the world for years", added Bachelet.
Bachelet also highlighted the trajectory of AURA, the many projects of which over time have made Chile a global leader in astronomical research.
"It is estimated that by the year 2020, 70 percent of global astronomical infrastructure will be concentrated in our country, with the most powerful telescopes ever installed, and an investment close to $6 billion," she said.
The president emphasised that these scientific and technological developments contribute a lot to the Chilean scientific community and the well-being of its 17 million people.