The European Solar Telescope

How the EST will probably look: Courtesy European Solar Telescope — EST

The location for The European Solar Telescope (EST) has just been announced: it will be built at the Roque de Los Muchachos on the island of La Palma, close to the Swedish Solar Telescope (SST) and the mothballed Dutch Open Telescope. A solar astronomer once told me that the best possible location would be a 3 km high tower poking up out of the middle of the ocean, and that La Palma was a pretty good approximation to that.