Euro50 was a proposed extremely large optical and infrared telescope. An agreement on collaboration for studies was established between scientists in Finland, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom.

The telescope design included a segmented primary mirror and a monolithic secondary mirror. Full, dual-conjugate adaptive optics was envisaged in the K-band. The telescope could be placed on La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, but other options remained open. The scientific potential of an adaptive 50 m telescope is truly impressive and it is fair to say that construction of such a telescope would revolutionize astronomy. A 372 pages Design Study Report for the Euro50 can be obtained from the Telescope Group. It can also be downloaded here (52 MB).

Following discussions by the end of 2006, it has been decided that Europe will proceed with design and construction of an extremely large telescope in the 42 m class (E-ELT). The design will has drawn upon results from studies of the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL) and of the Euro50.

We here include the original Euro50 pages for historical reasons.