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Press Releases

eso9211 — Organisation Release

Remote Observations with the ESO NTT from Trieste — How to Stay in Italy, Look Through a Telescope in Chile and Observe a Cosmic Mirage 5000 Million Light-years Away

13 August 1992: Italian astronomers, working from the Astronomical Observatory in Trieste, have performed remote observations with the ESO 3.5 metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) at La Silla, Chile. This is the first time ever that such observations have been made directly from an astronomical institute in one of the ESO member countries. Quite unexpectedly, a "cosmic mirage", that is a gravitational lens in a distant cluster of galaxies, was found during these observations.

eso9210 — Photo Release

Comet Grigg-Skjellerup on July 10, 1992

10 July 1992: This photo shows Comet Grigg-Skjellerup, as imaged by the ESO 3.6 m telescope at the La Silla Observatory in the early morning of July 10, 1992, just 15 hours before the Giotto encounter with this comet. The observation was made by Dr. Klaus Jockers from the Max-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany), and in the course of a special monitoring programme in support of the Giotto Extended Mission. The digital image was transmitted to the ESO Headquarters in Garching via the permanent satellite link, immediately following the observations. The photo is a composite of four one-minute red-sensitive exposures. The other objects in the field are galactic stars.

eso9209 — Photo Release

Comet Grigg-Skjellerup

1 July 1992: This photo shows Comet Grigg-Skjellerup, which will be visited by the Giotto spacecraft of the European Space Agency (ESA) on July 10, 1992

eso9208 — Organisation Release

Riccardo Giacconi – ESO's Next Director General

10 June 1992: In its 67th meeting in Garching on June 4 and 5, 1992 the Council of ESO appointed Prof. Riccardo Giacconi as Director General for the period 1993-1997. He succeeds Prof. Harry van der Laan whose five year term ends this year.

eso9207 — Science Release

Comet Halley 1992

13 May 1992: This negative photo shows a small sky area in the direction of Comet Halley, obtained by ESO astronomers Alain Smette and Olivier Hainaut with the ESO 3.5-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) in the morning of April 6, 1992

eso9206 — Science Release

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Discovers a High-Energy Jet in Galaxy NGC 38621

7 May 1992: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has revealed an unusual and fascinating new optical jet in the nucleus of the elliptical galaxy NGC 3862.

eso9205 — Photo Release

The ESO Very Large Telescope

22 April 1992: The photo shows a model of the ESO 16-metre equivalent Very Large Telescope (VLT), as it will appear on the Paranal mountain in the Chilean Atacama desert towards the end of the present decade. The VLT will become the world's largest optical telescope when it is ready.

eso9204 — Organisation Release

Inauguration of the REOSC Polishing Facility for the Very Large Telescope 8.2-metre Mirrors [1]

21 April 1992: On April 24, 1992, the French Minister for Research and Space, Professor Hubert Curien, will inaugurate a unique, new optical facility of R.E.O.S.C [2] , at Saint Pierre du Perray, near Paris. The delicate polishing of the giant mirrors for ESO's 16-metre equivalent Very Large Telescope (VLT) will take place here.

eso9203 — Science Release

First Optical Images of the "Invisible" Counter-Jet in Giant Galaxy M87

25 February 1992: Messier 87 (M87) is a giant galaxy, situated right at the centre of one of the largest and nearest clusters of galaxies, the Virgo Cluster; its distance is about 50 million light-years) and several thousand galaxies belong to this cluster, but none is brighter and heavier than Messier 87. Already in 1918, photos showed the presence of a jet in M87, i.e. a long and thin feature, extending in a westerly direction from the centre of this galaxy. This jet bears witness to the violent processes at the centre of M87 and has led many astronomers to think that there is a giant black hole in there. Recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have strengthened this suspicion.

eso9202 — Photo Release

Most Distant Minor Planet in the Solar System

24 February 1992: This photo shows the newly discovered minor planet 1992 AD which is the most distant in the solar system. It was obtained at the ESO La Silla Observatory on 5 February 1992. The telescope followed the planet whose 16.7 magnitude image is round; the stars in the field are seen as short trails. The diffuse trail at the upper right corner is that of a galaxy

eso9201 — Organisation Release

CONICA and FORS: Advanced Electronic Eyes for the VLT

5 February 1992: The ESO 16-metre equivalent Very Large Telescope (VLT) [1] will be equipped with technologically advanced instruments that record the light collected by the large mirrors.

eso9110 — Science Release

A Ground-based Image of Minor Planet (951) Gaspra — Galileo Fly-By on October 29, 1991

29 October 1991: This is a ground-based photo of the first minor planet ever to be visited by a spacecraft. On October 29, 1991, the NASA spacecraft Galileo will pass minor planet no. 951 Gaspra on its way to Jupiter where it will arrive in December 1995. The distance from Gaspra to the Earth will be 410 million km at the time of the fly-by.

eso9109 — Science Release

Most Distant Cosmic Mirage?

22 October 1991: Observations with telescopes at the La Silla observatory have revealed that the image of an extremely distant quasar, known as Q1208+1011, actually consists of two images very close to each other. It is the most distant and also the brightest quasar ever observed to have a double image.

eso9108 — Organisation Release

VLT Main Structure To Be Built in Italy

24 September 1991: ESO is now awarding a major contract for its Very Large Telescope (VLT) to the "AES Consortium" of three Italian companies. It concerns the construction of the main mechanical structures of the four 8-m VLT unit telescopes, each of which will weigh more than 440 tons and yet must be machined with sub-micron precision in order to allow astronomical observations of the highest quality.

eso9107 — Science Release

Weighed and Found Too Light — No Black Hole in 88433

24 September 1991: Observations with the 3.5-m ESO New Technology Telescope by a European group of astronomers have shown that a very compact object in an extraordinary binary star, known under the astronomical designation 88433, is most probably a neutron star and not a black hole, as previously believed by most scientists. Improved observation techniques have allowed a reliable determination of the mass of this object: it is now found to weigh less than the Sun and is therefore not massive enough to be a black hole.

eso9106 — Science Release

Seventy-seven Dead Cows in the Desert — Astronomers Study Gigantic Stony-Iron Meteorite

16 July 1991: The lonely Atacama desert is a perfect place to study distant celestial bodies in the space around us. The following story shows how this may be done, not only through powerful astronomical telescopes at isolated mountain-top observatories [1], but also down on the barren desert plain in a much more direct way.

eso9105 — Photo Release

Towards the Beginnings — The NTT Provides the Deepest Look Into Space

31 May 1991: The ESO New Technology Telescope on La Silla has again proven its extraordinary abilities. Known since two years as the world's best optical telescope [1], it has now produced the "deepest" view into the distant regions of the Universe ever obtained with any ground-or space-based telescope. The new picture shows enormous numbers of extremely faint and remote galaxies whose images almost completely fill the field of view. Expressed in astronomical terms, the picture reaches beyond magnitude 29 [2].

eso9104 — Organisation Release

The VLT Observatory at Paranal Takes Shape — ESO Awards Contracts to Dutch and Danish Firms

26 April 1991: The decision to place the world's largest telescope, the ESO 16 metre equivalent Very Large Telescope (VLT) on the Paranal mountain in the Chilean Atacama desert [1], taken by the ESO Council on 4 December 1990, was today followed up by an important next step. During a small ceremony at the European Southern Observatory Headquarters in Garching, two major contracts were signed which will together define the future shape of the VLT Observatory and its infrastructure.

eso9103 — Photo Release

Dramatic Eruption on Comet Halley Surprises Astronomers — A most unexpected observation

22 February 1991: It was early in the morning of Tuesday, February 12, and ESO astronomers Olivier Hainaut and Alain Smette [1] did not know what to believe. Observing with the Danish 1.54-metre telescope at the La Silla observatory, they had just finished a one-hour exposure of a small sky field in the constellation of Hydra (the Water Snake). This work was part of the ESO monitoring programme of famous Comet Halley and the astronomers felt that something was quite wrong.

eso9102 — Organisation Release

A Flying Start for a Super Telescope: Schott Successfully Casts an 8-m Mirror Blank

6 February 1991: A test run for the manufacture of mirror blanks in the 8-metre class, for use in the world's largest optical telescope, the ESO 16-m equivalent Very Large Telescope (VLT), has been successfully performed at Schott in Mainz, Germany [1]. The test blank had a diameter of 8.6 metres and a surface area of more than 55 metres squared. This is the first time that has been possible to cast such a large glass-ceramic blank in one piece. To accomplish this impressive feat, Schott has developed a number of new technological procedures.

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