ELT-ANDES (formerly HIRES)

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is a next-generation optical telescope under construction for the European Southern Observatory (ESO). It will have a 39-meter-diameter primary mirror composed of 798 hexagonal mirror elements.

HIRES is the high-resolution spectrograph for the ELT. Some of the most prominent scientific goals include:

• characterizing the atmospheres of Earth-like planets in other solar systems, with the ultimate goal of discovering signs of life; discovering the first generation of stars by their chemical fingerprint in the prehistoric universe
• the discovery of the variation of some fundamental constants of physics, such as the electron-proton mass ratio, or the demonstration of the most stringent constraints on these quantities.