Announcements

29 November 2012: In recent months, ESO’s headquarters in Garching bei München, Germany, have been expanding. Construction of the extension began on 1 January 2012 and the foundation stone was laid on 11 June (ann12044). With the completion of the outer shell of this new building, it is now time for the Richtfest — a German name for a traditional ceremony known as topping out in other countries. The Richtfest was celebrated today at 15:00, and is a way of thanking the construction team for its successful work. This ceremony takes place when the outer structure and roof of a building has been put into place, and it is a chance for both the construction team and the future occupants to celebrate the current progress, and to hope for future luck with the building. Typically, the roof — the highest point on the building — is decorated and topped with a tree, and ...

19 October 2012: Representatives of Belgium have confirmed that their country will participate fully in the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) programme. Their commitment was announced at a recent meeting at ESO’s Headquarters in Garching, Germany. Seven ESO Member States have now approved their full participation in the E-ELT programme. At the last full meeting of the ESO Council, in June, Belgium was one of the four countries that voted in favour ad referendum, meaning subject to confirmation. The other three ad referendum votes were from Finland, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The remaining four ESO Member States are also actively working towards joining the programme in the near future. Construction of the E-ELT is expected to start in 2013, with first light to come early in the next decade.

11 October 2012: A new infrared instrument for ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) with 24 robotic arms has crossed the Atlantic from Edinburgh in the United Kingdom to ESO’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. When installed later in the year it will address, in more detail than ever before, some of the key questions surrounding the formation and evolution of galaxies. KMOS (K-Band Multi Object Spectrometer) has been provisionally accepted by ESO after it had completed final assembly and testing at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) in Edinburgh. It will now be fitted to Unit Telescope 1, one of the four telescopes that make up the VLT, and will provide astronomers with a far quicker way to uncover details about galaxies and their properties. KMOS is unique in its ability to image many galaxies simultaneously, either in a cluster or in isolation, but in both cases to also map out the ...

2 October 2012: Leading up to ESO’s 50th anniversary in October 2012, we are releasing eight special ESOcasts, each a chapter from the movie Europe to the Stars — ESO’s First 50 Years of Exploring the Southern Sky. The eighth and final episode of this series relates how ESO — based on experience gathered over the past fifty years as the most powerful observatory in history — is going to satisfy the eternal longing of astronomers: the construction of even bigger telescopes. The first of ESO’s next generation telescopes is almost finished on the Chajnantor Plateau. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter array (ALMA), a joint project of Europe, North America and Asia, will be composed of 66 high-precision antennas when it becomes fully operational in 2013. Acting together as a giant telescope, ALMA will reveal the finest details of the cool Universe, spotting the birth of the first galaxies and peeking inside the dusty ...

1 October 2012: The Federal Minister for Education and Research in Germany, Annette Schavan, made a special visit to ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile on 29–30 September 2012. The Minister and her delegation were hosted by ESO’s Director General, Tim de Zeeuw, the Director of Operations at the La Silla Paranal Observatory, Andreas Kaufer, and the Representative of ESO in Chile, Massimo Tarenghi. The delegation accompanying Minister Schavan included a State Minister, members of the German Parliament as well as senior representatives of German research organisations and universities. After a short presentation from ESO, Minister Schavan was given a tour of the Paranal base camp facilities, which include the award-winning Paranal Residencia, a unique building designed by the German architects Auer+Weber+Assoziierte, and which provides accommodation for astronomers, engineers, support staff and visitors staying at the observatory. The Minister then enjoyed a spectacular sunset, viewed from the platform of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) ...

28 September 2012: On 5 October 2012, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) will broadcast A Day in the Life of ESO, a free, live event on the web, as part of its 50th Anniversary celebrations. There will be live observations from ESO’s flagship observatory, the Very Large Telescope (VLT), on Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert, as well as fascinating talks from astronomers at ESO’s Headquarters in Germany. Members of the public are invited to ask questions in advance of the event, or during the stream, by Facebook, Twitter, and email. A timetable for the webcast is available below and online. For the first time in ESO’s history, the VLT will be pointed towards an object in the sky selected by members of the public — the Thor’s Helmet Nebula (NGC 2359). This striking nebula was selected as part of the Choose What the VLT Observes competition. Brigitte Bailleul, from France, won the ...

28 September 2012: ESO’s brand-new history book, The Jewel on the Mountaintop — The European Southern Observatory through Fifty Years, is a comprehensive account of the observatory, as well as a truly remarkable success story for European research. It is available for purchase in hardcover format from Wiley-VCH. Produced for ESO's 50th anniversary, The Jewel on the Mountaintop provides a deep insight into ESO’s history as told by the people who have made it what it is today. It tells of the battles fought, the mountains climbed and the hurdles overcome in order to obtain a better understanding of the Universe of which we are a part. The author, senior ESO adviser Claus Madsen, carried out extensive interviews with key players, from both inside and outside the organisation to allow him to accurately portray the evolution and significance of the organisation and its achievements. The book is divided into four sections, entitled Catching ...

5 September 2012: The winner of the first European Astronomy Journalism Prize, designed to help inspire the next generation of researchers, has been announced today (5 September 2012) at a reception in the House of Commons. Katia Moskvitch from the BBC was announced as the winner and awarded a trip to Chile by a panel of judges representing the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), who ran the competition, together with the Royal Astronomical Society and the Association of British Science Writers. The aim of the prize was to increase media coverage of the field, as a means of promoting the wonders of astronomy — a subject regularly cited as a key reason for students opting to take up careers in science. The judges chose Katia as the winner for her remarkable series on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, located at the Paranal Observatory, Chile. [1] Katia’s prize ...

21 August 2012: On 16–17 October 2012, ESO will host an industry event at the Press Club of the Allianz Arena, Munich. The event is to provide information for companies from the ESO Member States who may be interested in participating, whether as prime contractors or as subcontractors, in the construction of the dome and main structure of the European Extremely Large Telescope, the world’s biggest eye on the sky. All participants will be offered the opportunity to display a poster about their company and to make a short (5-minute) presentation to introduce themselves. To register your interest in participating in this event, please contact the Industrial Liaison Officer for your country or ESO at industry@eso.org.

30 July 2012: The latest edition of ESO’s quarterly journal, The Messenger, is now available online. Find out the latest from ESO, with topics ranging from new telescopes and instruments to the latest discoveries. Highlights include: A report on the progress of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) project. A description of POPIPlaN, an image catalogue of newly discovered southern planetary nebulae. A study of massive stars beyond the Magellanic Clouds using the X-shooter spectrograph. The story behind the use of renewable energy at the Paranal Observatory.

2 July 2012: The ESO Annual Report 2011 is now available. It presents the many activities of the European Southern Observatory throughout the last year, covering topics including: Research highlights from ESO facilities, with the latest results from fields such as exoplanets and planet formation; the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way; the study of active galactic nuclei; the first stars; and the reionisation of the Universe. A summary of the activities of ESO’s telescopes. The status of the astronomical instruments at the La Silla Paranal Observatory, describing in detail new instruments and upgrades. The latest news from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) projects.

20 June 2012: When ESA wanted to test concepts for future Mars roving vehicles they needed a landscape as similar to the surface of Mars as possible. The Atacama Desert at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile fitted the bill perfectly. Rovers on Mars cannot be driven directly from Earth — it takes radio signals up to 40 minutes to make the trip to Mars and back. Instead, they are given instructions to carry out autonomously. But current rovers can only move slowly and need frequent updates from Earth. The ESA team is testing concepts that will allow future rovers to travel much further on their own. ESO’s Paranal Observatory acted as host for the rover experiments and provided welcome respite for the team and its equipment during the cold and windy nights. For two weeks the team put the prototype rover, called Seeker, into action within a particularly Mars-like zone not far ...

18 June 2012: World renowned astrophotographer and ESO Photo Ambassador, Serge Brunier, has returned to ESO’s observatory sites in Chile and this time he is sharing his experiences on a live blog hosted by the Skypix Science et Vie website. The blog posts are available in English and in French. You can also follow Serge’s adventures on Twitter by searching for the hashtag #ESOlive. Serge was at the La Silla Observatory, located on the outskirts of the Atacama Desert, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2400 metres. On this site ESO operates some of the most productive 4-metre-class telescopes in the world. After La Silla, Serge is heading further north in Chile to the Paranal Observatory, home of the Very Large Telescope and nearby Cerro Armazones, where ESO will be building the European Extremely Large Telescope — the world’s biggest eye on the sky.

15 June 2012: Media representatives are invited to attend the ESO@50 scientific workshop, an event organised in celebration of ESO’s 50th anniversary. ESO@50 will take place between 3 and 7 September 2012 at ESO’s Headquarters in Garching bei München, Germany. Some of the most prominent scientists from Europe and around the world will participate. During the 5-day workshop journalists will have the opportunity to join the astronomers to get an overview of the main scientific topics where observations at ESO facilities have contributed to major progress in astronomy, from Solar System astronomy to fundamental physics. Original perspectives on the scientific challenges of the coming decades will also be presented. Interviews with participants will also be possible. Among the invited speakers are: Richard Ellis: ESO's impact on ground-based astronomy Marijn Franx: High-redshift clusters and proto-clusters Reinhard Genzel: The Milky Way centre Alvio Renzini: How ESO changed astronomy in Europe A full list is available ...

11 June 2012: On 11 June 2012 at 18:00, a ceremony took place at ESO’s Headquarters in Garching bei München, Germany, to mark the laying of the foundation stone of a major new extension to the ESO building. A time capsule containing a scroll listing the names of the ESO Council delegates, the latest issue of The ESO Messenger and a copy of a local newspaper for the day was also sealed and placed in the foundations during the ceremony. The Headquarters extension will feature an office building, a technical building and a covered bridge that will connect the new buildings to the original Headquarters. The buildings will make extensive use of natural light sources and there will be two inner courtyards. This striking and innovative design is in keeping with the current building and retains the same curved shapes. Further details about the building are available here: eso1215. The new office building, ...

30 May 2012: The new technology of laser frequency combs (eso0826) [1] has now been tested with the HARPS [2] planet-finder on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. Frequency combs provide reference light sources of extraordinary stability and have the potential to allow HARPS and similar instruments to make much more precise measurements than is currently possible [3]. This novel technique is expected to become a revolutionary tool for the astronomical community and help astronomers to find Earth-like planets in the habitable zones around nearby stars. The results are being presented in a paper to appear in the 31 May 2012 edition of the journal Nature.A team of scientists from ESO, the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ, Garching, Germany) and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC, Tenerife, Spain) — led by Tobias Wilken, a researcher at MPQ — has used a laser frequency comb to ...

22 May 2012: ESO has taken a further step towards the construction of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) by awarding the preliminary design study contract for the adaptive fourth mirror (M4) of the E-ELT to the AdOptica consortium made up of ADS International (Italy) and Microgate (Italy) [1]. This mirror will be a major milestone in adaptive optics technology, becoming the largest adaptive mirror ever made for a telescope. It will be crucial for exploiting the E-ELT’s unprecedented potential, allowing astronomers to achieve major scientific breakthroughs during the next decades. The M4 mirror is part of the E-ELT’s adaptive optics system, which will be responsible for correcting the blurring effects produced both by turbulence in the atmosphere, and the effects of wind on the telescope structure. When installed this remarkable deformable mirror will allow the E-ELT to reach the theoretical maximum resolution possible in its observations [2].The M4 flat mirror will be ...

27 April 2012: Event organisers are invited to join an international series of coordinated public events on 5 October 2012 marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory. The events will celebrate Europe’s quest to explore the southern sky, with unique and exciting activities. ESO invites venues such as public observatories, planetariums, science centres, museums, art galleries, and other public spaces, as well as organisers working with these venues, to apply to host one of these events. The centrepiece of the coordinated events will be a live connection to ESO’s Paranal Observatory, in Chile, home of the world’s most advanced visible light astronomical observatory — the Very Large Telescope (VLT). A never-before-seen stunning astronomical image from ESO will also be unveiled. In addition to the live streaming and never-before-seen image, ESO representatives will visit venues to talk about ESO’s state-of-the-art observatories, and the latest scientific and technological results. Organisers ...

26 April 2012: The European Southern Observatory (ESO) invites venues such as public observatories, planetariums, science centres, museums, art galleries, and other public spaces, as well as organisers working with these venues, to join an international public exhibition campaign in 2012–2013 celebrating Europe’s quest to explore the southern sky. "Awesome Universe — the Cosmos through the Eyes of the European Southern Observatory" marks the 50th anniversary of ESO. A number of grants for financial support are available. The exhibition campaign is aimed at the general public. Visitors will discover 50 visually stunning images, showcasing celestial objects such as galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters as seen by ESO’s observatories — home to the world’s most advanced ground-based telescopes — as well as beautiful images of the observatories themselves, which are located in some of the most unusual places on Earth. Additional exhibition panels introduce ESO itself, and present the highlights of the observatory's first ...

29 March 2012: A new journalism competition to capture and promote inspirational coverage of European astronomy is launched today (Thursday 29 March) at the UK National Astronomy Meeting 2012 [1]. The prize is the ultimate for any astronomy enthusiast — a trip to the world’s most advanced optical instrument: the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile. Entries for the European Astronomy Journalism Prize must be about astronomy and related areas of technology, or about the work and lifestyles of astronomers, engineers or others working in the field of astronomy. The entries must reflect European interests and they can be online, written or broadcast. The competition is being run by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in conjunction with the Association of British Science Writers and the Royal Astronomical Society. It is open for entries from Monday 2 April 2012 until Friday 27 July ...