Two significant events happened recently and if you aren’t presently aware of them; then, I’d like ot share them with you here:
1) The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer has seen first light and is fully operational. and worth reading about as it one of the new VLTs around. While the The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer is primarly designed to probe for earth like planets – there is the article and a close up photo of the telescope:
2) EDGES, EDGES is a radio spectrometer project operating at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, in Western Australia. Studying the 21 cm line in the early universe, a very challenging project but one we hope to see some viable data from in the coming months.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-12/asu-aao120610.php
There are more telescopes currently in development and or testing and some of these are VLTs and so ground based Astronomy, both optical and radio are in for some big leaps forward in the coming decade.