Working on the massive dome shutter of GranTeCan

GranTeCan is the biggest optical telescope in the world, and it’s hard to convey the sheer size of it in a photograph.  The telescope itself weighs 485 tonnes.  You could fit an tennis court inside the dome, and the top of the dome is 41 m above the ground.  But you can’t see any of that in a photograph.

Working on the massive dome shutter of GranTeCan

Luckily for me, the engineers did some maintenance on the massive dome recently. Once you have people in the photograph, you get an idea of the size.

Working on the massive dome shutter of GranTeCan