Number 13 (Story #3), December 17, 1990 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein THE VERY LARGE TELESCOPE (VLT) , the largest optical telescope ever, will be built at Cerro Paranel, a mountaintop in Chile, by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The VLT will consist of four 8.2-m telescopes, the first of which should be installed by 1995; the equivalent 16-m diameter of the composite device will be much larger than the 10-m Keck or 6-m Hale telescopes. The seeing conditions for VLT, already very good because of the high elevation in the Andean mountains, will be improved by the use of adaptive optics. The resultant optimal resolution for the telescope may be as good as 0.0005 arcseconds. (ESO news release, Dec. 4.)