Overwhelmingly Large Telescope

The Overwhelmingly Large Telescope is a ground based optical Telescope, first proposed in 1998 by the European Southern Observatory. It's most notable feature is a single aperture of 100 meters in diameter. This allows it to see astronomical objects with an apparent magnitude of 38 or 1500 times fainter than objects that could be detected by the Hubble Space Telescope.

With funding acquired from both private and government sources the European Southern Observatory(ESO) began construction in 2008 at their Cerro Amazones site in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. The telescope was completed on schedule and first light occurred in 2018.

With its exceptionally large aperture, the telescope is able to spectroscopically analyze Earth-size planets around the forty nearest sun-like stars. As such, this telescope helped in the exploration of exoplanets and search for extraterrestrial life (because the spectrum from the planets could reveal the presence of molecules indicative of life).

Thanks to its remote location the telescope survived the nuclear exchanges in the middle of the 21st century and was later instrumental in finding exoplanet candidates to be explored by the first interstellar missions.