The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has donated $200-million to the California Institute of Technology and the University of California system to help develop the world’s largest optical telescope, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Matching funds from the universities will bring the total donated for the project to $300-million. In addition, the foundation had already given $50-million of the $79-million needed to design the telescope.

The telescope — to be built in Chile, Hawaii, or California by 2017 — will be composed of hundreds of small mirrors that, collectively, will measure 100 feet across, three times the size of the world’s largest telescope now. Laser technology that corrects for distortions of light in the atmosphere will give the telescope resolution greater than that of the Hubble Space Telescope, the article says.

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