European Extremely Large Telescope, animation. This planned future telescope is designed to have a primary mirror 42 metres in diameter, made up of nearly one thousand individual hexagonal component mirrors. This would give it 15 times more light_gathering power than current optical telescopes. In April 2010, it was announced that the E_ELT would be located on Cerro Armazones, a mountain in Chile, at an altitude of some 2700 metres. If the project gets the go_ahead, it is estimated that it could be operational by 2018.