Next-Generation Facilities

The next-generation ground-based observatory for very-high-energy gamma rays, an array of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes being built across two sites — one in the northern hemisphere on La Palma and one in the southern hemisphere in Chile — to catch the faint blue flashes that gamma rays make in the atmosphere. The largest such observatory ever built.

A next-generation optical and near-infrared telescope under construction at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, using seven 8.4-metre mirror segments to form a single light-collecting surface with a resolving power far beyond today's largest telescopes. One of the extremely large telescopes of the coming decade, alongside the ELT and TMT.

A proposed radio interferometer, designed as the successor to the Very Large Array and a complement to ALMA, that would observe the centimetre-to-millimetre sky with far greater sensitivity and resolution — imaging planet-forming discs, molecular gas, and the distant universe. Led by the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory.