Announcements 2021

15 December 2021: Today, ESO and the Government of Chile, through its National Research and Development Agency (ANID), signed an agreement on scientific and technological cooperation for the construction and operation of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ESO’s ELT), which will be the biggest optical/infrared telescope in the world. The agreement, signed at ESO offices in Santiago by Xavier Barcons, ESO Director General, and Aisén Etcheverry, National Director of ANID, will fund ELT-related projects in engineering, computing, and other areas proposed by Chilean academic institutes. These projects will allow the training, for at least a decade, of highly specialised engineers, technicians and scientists in Chile. “With the signature of this agreement with ANID, we are breaking new ground in our long-standing cooperation with Chile. We will now jointly fund projects of interest to both Chile and ESO around the largest optical telescope ever built. Through this programme we will further the engagement between ESO ...

1 December 2021: The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has partnered with UN Women to train seven Chile-based women in key astronomical technical skills, which will allow them to expand their job opportunities and gain skills to work in top astronomical observatories under the Second Chance programme (Tu Oportunidad) in Chile. This programme, a UN Women initiative, is being implemented at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Northern Chile’s Antofagasta Region in collaboration with ESO. It aims to prepare a group of women, six from the city of Antofagasta and one from Viña del Mar, to expand their knowledge and improve their job opportunities and technical skills through astronomy. The training programme is provided under the framework of the agreement between ESO and UN Women signed in 2020, and will give the women technical training in coating techniques for telescopes that are used in professional astronomical observatories. The coating of large telescopes, a process that ...

19 November 2021: As part of its long-standing cooperation agreement with Chile, ESO provides and manages an annual fund that awards projects dedicated to the development of scientific, technological and educational research and cooperation in astronomy throughout the country. Following two calls for proposals, the Joint Committee ESO–Government of Chile 2021 has now selected 22 national and regional projects fitting these criteria, awarding a total of 600 million Chilean pesos (about €650 000). The 2021 national call had 19 winning projects. The funds will support postdoctoral programmes and academic positions in astronomy in Chilean institutions, scientific visits by national and foreign researchers, the construction of technology for astronomy and related disciplines, as well as educational programmes for the teaching and dissemination of this science in Chile. Among this year’s winners, is a project to promote astronomy engagement amongst underrepresented and lower income communities in Cerro Navia, a municipality in the Santiago Metropolitan Region. ...

18 November 2021: Today, the Bavarian Minister of Science and Arts Bernd Sibler visited the ESO Headquarters in Garching bei München, Germany. Minister Sibler was accompanied by Rolf-Dieter Jungk, Head of Office in the Bavarian State Ministry for Science and Art and a small delegation, in line with current COVID-19 restrictions. The visit provided an opportunity for the Minister and his delegation to learn more about ESO and its cutting-edge science and technology. The visitors met with ESO’s Director General Xavier Barcons, ESO’s Council President Linda Tacconi, the ESO Director of Administration Claudia Burger, the ESO Director for Science Rob Ivison, and the ESO Deputy Head of the Office of the Director General Nikolaj Gube. After a presentation about ESO and its activities by the Director General, Minister Sibler and his delegation were given a tour of the facilities at the Garching site, including a stop at the visitor window of ESO’s integration ...

12 November 2021: As one of the world’s leading astronomy organisations, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is fully committed to fighting climate change by reducing the environmental impact of its activities. The ESO Directors Team has now approved a new set of measures to gradually decrease the organisation’s carbon footprint over the coming years. The measures are inspired by the United Nations guidelines and build upon the actions ESO had already adopted in the past. ESO carries out the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities, providing astronomers worldwide with some of the best tools for their research and discoveries. This work leads to invaluable scientific and technological progress and other societal benefits, but also unavoidably places demands on resources, energy and the environment. In a carbon audit conducted in 2019, ESO’s 2018 footprint budget was estimated to be around 28 000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year (tCO2e/yr) [1], with ...

29 October 2021: Twenty years ago today, light from two of the 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (UTs) of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile was combined for the first time. The event marked the historic moment when these telescopes first operated as a true interferometer, sparking the beginning of a new era for astronomy. When the light beams of the two UTs were combined on the night of 29 October 2001, the VLTI did not only successfully start its operations, but also delivered its first scientific results: the measurement of the size of the southern star Achernar, which was found to be approximately ten times larger than our Sun. This was followed by three more nights of scientific observations, where the VLTI showcased its excellent potential by measuring ten more stars, and notably performing the first interferometric observation of the intriguing Eta Carinae. The successful concept of the VLTI ...

6 October 2021: The largest adaptive mirror ever built, the M4 mirror for ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), has reached an important milestone in its development: all six petal-shaped segments that make up the mirror are now completed. M4, the fourth mirror in the light path of the telescope, can change shape quickly and very precisely, and is a key part of the ELT’s adaptive optics system. Light from cosmic objects is distorted by our planet’s atmosphere, producing blurred images. To correct for these distortions, the ELT will use advanced adaptive-optics hardware and software, some of which has been specially developed for the telescope. This includes powerful lasers that create artificial reference stars when there aren’t stars bright enough close to the object of interest to allow measurements of atmospheric distortions, and fast and accurate sensing cameras that measure these distortions. The measurements are then passed to extremely fast real-time computers that ...

1 October 2021: Today, the Chilean astronomer Luis Chavarría became ESO's new Representative in Chile. He succeeds Jean-Michel Bonneau, who was the interim Representative from June 2021 following Claudio Melo’s departure at the end of May 2021. Luis Chavarría will lead the ESO Representation Office in Chile, which acts on behalf of the ESO Director General in all relevant matters for the organisation in the country. This includes collaborating with Chilean communities and authorities and the diplomatic missions of ESO Member States in Chile. Chavarría will be the first Chilean national to hold this position. "I would like to continue promoting ESO as a pole of scientific development for society, based on the work done at La Silla, Paranal and ALMA observatories. Moreover, ESO's Extremely Large Telescope construction and the Cherenkov Telescope Array South arrival, open the doors to new scientific collaboration from disciplines close to astronomy, such as astrobiology or the high-energy ...

1 October 2021: Ten years ago, the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), an international observatory in which ESO is a partner, officially opened to astronomers. The occasion was marked on 3 October 2011 with the release of the first image taken with the array — of the colliding Antennae Galaxies — showcasing ALMA’s potential and heralding the start of a successful decade of astronomy. Located on the Chajnantor plateau in northern Chile at an elevation of 5000 metres, the array was operating with only a third of its 66 movable antennas when it first opened for scientific observations. Nonetheless, ALMA received over 900 observing proposals, with around 100 being selected, showing just how excited the scientific community were to make use of this new facility. Over the past decade, ALMA has continued to be in high demand for astronomers around the world: observing proposals still far outstrip the available time, and many interesting ...

8 September 2021: First light has been achieved for a new set of receivers installed on the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. The band 1 receivers pick up radio waves between 6 and 8.5 mm in length, setting a new record for the longest wavelengths that ALMA can observe. They will allow astronomers to view the early, distant Universe and to explore how planets form as never before. To capture radiation from cosmic sources over a broad range of wavelengths, ALMA’s 66 antennas, located on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile, are equipped with precisely tuned receivers. Each receiver type is sensitive to a particular "band" or range of wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. Until recently, eight out of a planned ten receivers had been mounted on the antennas, covering altogether the window between 0.3 and 3.6 mm (bands 10 to 3). Now, thanks to band 1 receivers, ...

31 August 2021: A powerful experimental laser, based on ESO technology, passed a key test last month at the Allgäuer VolksSternwarte Ottobeuren observatory in Germany. The adaptive-optics laser, developed in collaboration with industry, has important additional capabilities compared to existing systems. It will be part of the CaNaPy Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics system set to be installed at the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Optical Ground Station in Tenerife, Spain, in the frame of the ESO–ESA Research & Development collaboration. The higher laser power, nearly three times higher than in current systems, opens the door for developments in laser satellite communication, as well as significant improvements in the sharpness of astronomical images taken with ground-based telescopes. Astronomical adaptive optics refers to systems on ground-based telescopes that correct for the blurring effect brought about by turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere — the same effect that causes stars seen from Earth to “twinkle”. To remove ...

6 July 2021: An exciting new instrument, a spectrometer called CONCERTO, has successfully produced its first observations: test images of the Cat's Paw Nebula and the Crab Nebula. The instrument, installed on the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), will help astronomers probe the mysterious, ancient cosmic epoch during which the first stars lit up. The main goal of CONCERTO, which stands for CarbON CII line in post-rEionisation and ReionisaTiOn epoch, is to study the birth of the first generation of stars. To do so, it will look at cosmic objects that formed between 600 million and 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. This era, known as cosmic reionisation, is poorly understood yet crucial in the history of the cosmos, as it marks the transition between the “dark ages” — a very obscure period in the life of the Universe in which stars had not formed yet — and the time when the ...

1 July 2021: The ESO Annual Report 2020 is now available. It presents a summary of ESO’s many activities throughout the year. The contents include: The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on ESO, including safety measures and the impact on staff; The ramp-down of the observatories into “Safe State” in March and the ramp-up which began in September, enabling science data from Paranal, APEX and La Silla to flow again; Work that continued in the laboratories under strict safety measures, providing crucial contributions to projects, as well as progress on design, software, data-related and other projects; Further progress made both at ESO and in industry on the Extremely Large Telescope, on the Paranal Instrumentation Programme, and on ALMA development projects; How scientific exploitation of ESO data continued to flourish during the year. Among the highlights was the confirmation of the predictions of General Relativity regarding the orbital precession of the star S2 around ...

14 June 2021: The Joint Committee of ESO and the Government of Chile has opened its funding opportunities for 2021. It will consider all proposals that contribute to the development of astronomy in Chile and will allocate funding of approximately 450 million Chilean pesos in 2021. The criteria for the allocation of funding will take into account the merit of the projects, the strategic priorities determined by the Committee, the match between the requested amount and the scope of the projects, and the applicants’ records.The programmes to be supported by this fund belong to the following areas: Funding of postdoctoral programmes and extended scientific visits for a duration of one to three months for postdocs, researchers or senior faculty of academic institutions. Academic faculty positions for periods of up to two years at Chilean academic institutions. Development and presentation of educational programmes for the teaching and dissemination of astronomy in Chile. Development programmes ...

11 June 2021: Preparations are being put in place to resume construction work on ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) at Cerro Armazones in Chile, following disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the closure of the site in mid-2020. As work on manufacturing and design elements of the ELT in Europe progressed steadily, the evolution of this complex and ambitious project, set to revolutionise modern astronomy, has been closely monitored over the past year. ESO’s ELT is now expected to deliver the first scientific observations in September 2027, about half a year after an initial “telescope technical first light”. In the last few weeks, the Italian consortium ACe (Cimolai, Astaldi) in charge of the dome and main structure construction, has started preparations to resume on-site activities on ESO’s ELT in the Chilean Atacama Desert, within the health and safety restrictions established by the country’s authorities. With this important return to work in ...

1 June 2021: Today, ESO signed an agreement with an international consortium to build and operate MAVIS, a unique instrument to be installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) that will provide images up to three times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope. MAVIS will tackle a range of research questions, from how the first stars formed 13 billion years ago to how weather changes on the planets and moons of the Solar System. “MAVIS will be a powerful instrument that will serve a very large number of key science projects,” explains François Rigaut, a professor at the Australian National University who is leading the consortium for MAVIS. “This will include observations of our own Solar System as well as planets around other stars, and the physics of star formation, from the Milky Way to the first star clusters in the Universe.” MAVIS, which stands for Multi-conjugate-adaptive-optics-Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph, will produce ...

20 May 2021: ESO observatories operated under challenging conditions in 2020 due to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, having to reduce and even pause scientific observations for a few months. Nonetheless, 2020 was still a very productive year for the observatory with regard to the number of papers that were published using data from ESO telescopes, mostly obtained in previous years. A recently published report from the ESO library shows that 2020 represents the fourth consecutive year that over 1000 scientific studies using ESO data were published. The majority of these publications, more than 600, used data from ESO’s flagship facility, the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and the VLT Interferometer (VLTI). Highlights include the first ever image of a multi-planet system around a Sun-like star and observing a star “dance” around a supermassive black hole. Of the 608 studies carried out using observations from the VLT and VLTI, 336 (55%) used data from the ...

31 March 2021: The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has become a partner in a new project, launched last week, that has formed Europe’s largest ground-based astronomy network — the Opticon-RadioNet Pilot (ORP). This network fosters the collaboration of 37 institutions, including ESO, from Europe, Australia and South Africa. Within the ORP, ESO will drive knowledge transfer by organising a broad suite of training programmes for the European astronomy community, which will include observing schools across European observatories, as well as archival, instrumentation, and proposal writing workshops. In the long term, ESO will also help the ORP develop strategies to promote equal-opportunity policies and actions in the astronomy community. With 15 million EUR of funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, the ORP merges two existing astronomy networks (Opticon and RadioNet) to bring together several telescopes and arrays from around the world, providing European astronomers access to a wide range ...

2 March 2021: The latest edition of ESO's journal, The Messenger, is now available online. This is a special issue dedicated to the instrumentation programme for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Selecting instruments for any telescope is a crucial step, making sure that the astronomical community it serves can undertake the scientific projects for which the telescope was designed. ESO has been working with its community of astronomers and instrument builders to establish the sequence in which the instruments planned for the ELT will be built and delivered to the observatory. This edition of The Messenger provides a status overview of the ELT instrumentation programme. Highlights from this special issue: Instrumentation for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope SUPER — AGN Feedback at Cosmic Noon Mapping the Youngest and Most Massive Stars in the Tarantula Nebula with MUSE-NFM Download The Messenger in PDF format or visit The Messenger website to subscribe and receive a free ...

1 February 2021: Since its first light in 2006, the high-resolution infrared CRIRES spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has made a number of exciting scientific discoveries. The new and improved CRIRES+, which has now seen first light, will develop the work of its predecessor and search for potentially habitable super-Earth exoplanets. CRIRES+, an instrument built by ESO in collaboration with a consortium of European institutes, will search the sky for super-Earths located within the habitable zones of nearby low-mass stars, the range of planetary orbits within which scientists believe a planet can support life. These types of planets are difficult to detect due to their relatively low masses. With CRIRES+, scientists will be better equipped to search for these super-Earths as they will be able to survey most stars in our stellar neighbourhood. Other science goals of CRIRES+ include studying the atmosphere of transiting exoplanets and the origin and evolution of ...