The largest telescope that will ever be built*

And the stars were beautiful. ■ AD: 👨‍💻 NordVPN's best deal is here: nordvpn.com/tomscott - with a 30-day money-back guarante

It was a pleasure hosting you, Tom! What a great video. We love your enthusiasm and the way you explain the technical challenges behind building such large optical telescopes.

Nice of Tom to put in a disclaimer that gifts from the Extremely Large Telescope will not influence his review of it. It makes me much more inclined to buying my ridiculously big telescopes from the Extremely Large Telescope people.

One interesting thing I noticed was that you had a lot of people from different countries all working together for the sake of astronomy. It’s kinda touching to see people from around the globe working towards a very human endeavor

As a physicist, this is perhaps one of the best science communicator videos out there. Tom's enthusiasm and emphasis on the technical challenges AND achievements is outstanding! Thank you

The fact that ESO had at one time proposed an even bigger telescope called the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope says it all when you gave scientist to naming things

Is this video a glimpse into Tom's future? Nearly 30 minutes long, a deeper and more complex treatment of the subject, so much production values that there are actual credits for the production team, something that definitely won't be coming out every Monday... and it's still Tom being Tom. I am here for this, even if I'm barely able to follow.

I have been working for this Observatory for decades, I put my hands in so many things you showed here and so far it is the best video I have seen. Because of the quality of the explanations, because of the enthusiasm. In 30min you manage to cover a lot of things happening there (not all), that's remarquable. I am a bit disapointed to hear that you had to pay your fly ticket, but I guess ESO has not yet seen the importance of this kind of work for its communication. So a small message to those responsibles at ESO, please make it easier next time.

This video is at (or above) the level of quality I'd expect from a tv network documentary. Really amazing work, Tom and team. Fascinating stuff.

A 30-minute video with Tom?! A blessing!

Concerning your worry about the length of the video in the newsletter: don't worry Tom. We like your videos because they are always as long as they need to be to fit all the information you have for us. And having such a detailed video once in a while is phenomenal.

I had 8 minutes so I thought a Tom Scott video would be perfect. 15 minutes in I realized this wasn’t a standard Tom Scott video. 😅 What an incredible place, science, and engineering. And incredible work filming and presenting it. What an incredible vote of confidence in your team to invite you out to see the site!

Man Tom, you really won the career lottery. Visiting the most interesting places on earth and sharing them with the world. We'll miss you on your hiatus, but you've earned it.

Only Tom Scott can make a 5 minute video give 30 minutes worth of information. And only Tom Scott can make a 30 minute video feel like 5 minutes. Stunning work good sir. Stunning.

Tom, in your newsletter you said you were worried that your audience woudnt be able to cope with this long video. Don’t be, its incredible! It is one of the best produced, best told stories I’ve seen and you should be proud of yourself! Thank you Tom and team for all the incredible work you have done the past few years and i am going to miss you!

3:00 this man is the most worthy to wear one of those galaxy hoodies

I don't know what kind of production team you have to help with all this but it is easy to recognize a colossal and effective effort. This felt like a ready-made presentation from the BBC. Thank you for all the time you put into this!

9:37 Fun fact about the air conditioning in these big observatories: When doing optical observations, it's important for the air to be still and stable. Introducing a temperature gradient to the air can cause distortion in the image observed by the telescope. To avoid this, large observatories often keep the telescope chamber (the dome) chilled to the expected overnight temperature, so that when they open the telescope to the night air, there is as little gradient in air temperatures between the telescope and the night sky as possible.

As a physicist watching this, please don't apologize for the analogy between radio waves and bass at 17:30. It's exactly accurate and a great example of science communication like so many other explainations in the video. Thank you for the great job on this one. Seems like it really paid off to redo the script as the final version is just amazing and worth every minute of watch time.

I remember sending Tom an email about 3 or 4 years ago telling him about this telescope and other cool things to see in Chile that I thought would be worthy of a video. I know the invitation this time came from ESO, but I like to think I had something to do with him making this. Love from Chile!🇨🇱