A new life for an old telescope

Imagine looking through your door’s peephole and seeing this! This Picture of the Week shows a fisheye view of the 1.52-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, one of our first telescopes that is now enjoying a second life.

ESO was founded in 1962, and only a few years later the 1.52-metre telescope was inaugurated. This telescope had several spectrographs like the Boller & Chivens, ECHELEC and FEROS, which studied spectacular comets, stars with powerful winds and exciting exoplanets among other things. 

This pioneering telescope was decommissioned in 2002, and FEROS was moved to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope also at La Silla, where it still searches for distant new worlds. 

But this wasn’t the end for the 1.52-m telescope. After a 20-year-long shutdown, the telescope was recommissioned and upgraded in 2022 as part of the PLATO Spec international project, led by a Czech team. It will now study exoplanets and other objects, supporting the PLATO and ARIEL missions of the European Space Agency –– a well-deserved new life for this telescope.