Gran Telescopio Canarias

The Gran Telescopio Canarias on La Palma, its dome standing clear of the cloud layer that fills the view behind it. That view is the reason it is here: at about 2,300 meters on the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, the telescope works above the clouds. Its 10.4-meter primary mirror is made of 36 hexagonal segments, a segmented design like Keck's on a slightly larger scale, and it ranks among the largest optical and infrared telescopes in the world.