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Updated: Jul 10, 2025

Bringing the Visible Universe into Focus with Robo-AO
Published on: February 12, 2013
Extremely large telescopes at risk
1Michael S. Turner is the Rauner Distinguished Service Professor emeritus in the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA, and a visiting professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Abstract:
Images of the cosmos from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope have awed the public and astronomers alike. Until the Hubble, breakthroughs in astronomy came from big telescopes on mountain-top observatories-discoveries that include the expansion of the Universe and planets orbiting other stars. A new generation of extremely large ground-based telescopes is under development, which, when paired with space-based observatories, will produce even more remarkable discoveries about our Universe.
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