Announcements 2016

18 May 2016: ESO will hold an online press conference at 15:00 CEST on Wednesday 25 May to unveil the construction design of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), to announce further details of the contract to build the dome and main telescope structure, and to update the media on the status and future plans for the world’s largest optical telescope. This is the largest contract ever awarded by ESO and the largest contract ever in ground-based astronomy. The contract will be signed during a ceremony earlier in the day at ESO’s Headquarters in Garching, Germany. After presentations, journalists will have the opportunity to ask questions of the ESO Director General Tim de Zeeuw, a representative of the ACe Consortium, and the E-ELT Programme Manager Roberto Tamai. To participate in the online conference, bona fide members of the media must register by completing this online RSVP form. The conference will be held using ...

2 May 2016: Where is the best place to look for signs of life in the Universe? New findings by an international team of astronomers suggest we should be looking at nearby stars known as ultracool dwarf stars. These are very dim stars, much cooler and redder than the Sun, and not much larger than Jupiter. But they are quite common, accounting for around 15% of the stars near to the Sun. 2MASS J23062928-0502285, also known as TRAPPIST-1, is an ultracool dwarf in the constellation of Aquarius. It is only 40 light-years from Earth, so despite its being very dim, astronomers were able to make very precise measurements using a specialist telescope called TRAPPIST at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. In this ESOcast, you will hear how they discovered three Earth-sized planets in orbit around TRAPPIST-1, which may have regions on them that could sustain life. These are the first such planets ...

22 April 2016: To enhance its programmes of scientific cooperation with the host country Chile, ESO provides and manages an annual fund for the development of astronomy- and technology-related disciplines in Chile. A board consisting of members from ESO and the Chilean Government, working through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, evaluates and selects programmes to be supported by this fund. These fall in five areas: ESO grant funding to postdoctoral programmes in astronomy at Chilean academic institutions. Funding for academic faculty positions for periods of up to two years at Chilean academic institutions. Funding to support the development and presentation of educational programmes for the teaching and dissemination of astronomy in Chile. Funding to support development programmes and the construction of technological systems for astronomy. Funding to support the development of astronomy in areas not covered by the above four categories. The Joint Committee of ESO and Government of Chile will consider all ...

15 April 2016: The GALACSI adaptive optics module, built by ESO’s engineers at its headquarters in Garching, Germany, has been thoroughly tested and has passed with flying colours. It will be shipped to Chile later this year to be fitted to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), on Cerro Paranal. GALACSI is a part of the adaptive optics system which will significantly increase the performance of the MUSE instrument, a panoramic integral-field spectrograph working at visible wavelengths. The MUSE instrument and the GALACSI system together will be known as the MUSE facility. Adding GALACSI to MUSE will essentially double the amount of energy in each image pixel, providing astronomers with a much more powerful tool. As well as bringing about a huge improvement in the VLT’s capabilities, GALACSI and the other elements of the adaptive optics system are advancing technology that will be used on the forthcoming European Extremely Large Telescope. Adaptive optics systems ...

12 April 2016: On 12 April 2016 the impressive Star-roof for the ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre building was installed. The roof, which weighs almost 30 tonnes, consists of glass panels set into a metal framework made of triangular sections — 262 of them, arranged to artistically represent some of the constellations of the southern sky. It was constructed by South Tyrolean family company, Frener-Reifer after an idea from Bernhardt + Partner architects working together with ESO’s astronomers. The whole roof was installed in one single lift using a special 500-tonne crane. The roof will allow visitors to the centre to see the sky above, while beneath it they are introduced to the full majesty of the Universe in ESO’s new educational and public outreach facility. It will be studded with lights, to mimic in a modest way the spectacular view of the sky that astronomers at ESO's observatory sites can expect ...

5 April 2016: ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek is in Chile at the moment, as a member of ESO’s Fulldome Expedition, amassing photographic images to use in planetarium shows. The material will be used in ESO’s Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre, currently under construction at ESO’s Headquarters in Garching, Germany. As a warm-up he captured this astonishingly rich image of the skies above ESO’s Paranal Observatory, home of the Very Large Telescope facility. Thanks to the magic of photography, Petr himself also appears in this image, gazing in wonder at the display above him. The Milky Way arches above the illuminated dome of the astronomers’ hotel — La Residencia, as it is called — which has been specially designed so as not to produce any light pollution that would interfere with the operation of the telescopes. Other splendours of the southern sky, including the Magellanic Clouds just above the dome of the Residencia, ...

1 April 2016: The ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre, in collaboration with the Haus der Astronomie, Heidelberg, is organising a one day workshop on Kepler’s Laws for secondary school teachers, on Friday 1 July 2016. German speaking teachers from any of the ESO Member States are welcome to attend. The aim of the workshop is to show how important Kepler’s Laws are to modern astronomy. In particular, Kepler’s Third Law allows scientists to estimate the masses of supermassive black holes and of planets orbiting other stars, while deviations from Kepler’s laws exhibited by galaxy rotation curves led to the discovery of dark matter. Through a combination of short introductory talks and interactive workshops, participating teachers will be provided with educational materials they can use directly in the classroom. The ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre is currently under construction and as such, the training session will be held at ESO Headquarters in ...

31 March 2016: The latest edition of ESO's quarterly journal, The Messenger, is now available online. Find out the latest news from ESO on topics ranging from new instruments to the latest science discoveries. Highlights of this edition include: The Growth of the User Community of the La Silla Paranal Observatory Science Archive New Eyes on the Sun — Solar Science with ALMA The Central Role of FORS1/2 Spectropolarimetric Observations for the Progress of Stellar Magnetism Studies The KMOS AGN Survey at High Redshift (KASHz) Light Phenomena over the ESO Observatories I: Airglow Download The Messenger in PDF format or visit The Messenger website to subscribe and receive a free printed copy. This product is also available in the ESOshop.

29 March 2016: An agreement has been signed between ESO and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique [1], acting on behalf of the Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, to build a new adaptive optics system for the auxiliary telescopes that form part of ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) array [2] at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The new system, called the New Adaptive Optics Module for Interferometry (NAOMI) will make a big improvement to the imaging capability of the VLTI. The VLTI is already a remarkable astronomical facility that has made significant contributions to the study of various objects, like young pre-main sequence stars and their protoplanetary discs, post-main sequence mass-losing stars, and active galactic nuclei. A NAOMI module will be installed on each of ESO’s 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes (AT), bringing a more advanced adaptive optics system to the ATs that will allow them, and the VLTI array, to ...

29 March 2016: A survey of peer-reviewed scientific papers published in 2015 and using data from ESO’s telescopes and instruments has shown that ESO remains the world’s most productive ground-based observatory. Astronomers used observational data from ESO facilities to produce 860 refereed papers last year. There were 550 papers credited to ESO in 2015 that used data acquired with either the Very Large Telescope (VLT) or the VLT Interferometer facilities on Cerro Paranal. The three most productive VLT instruments in terms of papers are UVES, FORS2 and X-shooter, which featured in 144, 91 and 78 papers, respectively. Data from the VISTA survey telescope on Cerro Paranal led to 73 papers. Facilities located at La Silla provided data for more than 200 papers in total. HARPS remains La Silla’s most productive instrument, with 81 papers to its name, an increase of ten over last year. The number of papers based on European observing time ...

24 March 2016: The 19th issue of the Communicating Astronomy with the Public journal is out now! This special issue includes an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the outreach activities surrounding ESA’s dramatic Rosetta mission. The creators of the communications storm that stoked Rosetta’s success tell all and share their experiences of the process. This, and much more, is featured in this free, peer-reviewed journal for astronomy communicators — now available for download. This product is available for preorder in the ESOshop. Confirmation of print subscription In this issue and the next we are running a campaign to update our list of subscribers to the print version of the Journal. If you are receiving the CAPjournal in hard copy, please follow these instructions. On the label of the envelope in which your receive this issue of the journal you will find a unique web link, written in the format http://eso.org/capj/MMMM. Please do the following: ...

23 March 2016: Scientists and engineers have begun mapping out the detailed specifications of two new instruments that will be part of the instrument suite on ESO’s forthcoming European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). MOS (the Multi-Object Spectrograph) and HIRES (the High Resolution Spectrograph) will be world-leading workhorse instruments on what will be the world’s largest telescope. The contract to begin design studies for MOS was signed on 18 March 2016 by ESO and the CNRS-INSU, the leading institution in the MOSAIC consortium [1]. The instrument will combine high spectral and spatial resolution and will carry out wide-field surveys in the visible and infrared parts of the spectrum. It will allow astronomers to probe some of the deepest mysteries of the Universe: when did the first galaxies form and how did they aggregate into large structures like the Milky Way; how are ordinary matter and dark matter distributed throughout the Universe; and how do ...

21 March 2016: On 26 April 2016 an event will be held at the Paranal Observatory in Chile to mark the first light of a new laser unit on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Members of the press are invited to attend the event (at their own cost), and those who wish to do so are asked complete this RSVP form. The event will include an optional visit to Cerro Armazones, the future home of the European Extremely Large Telescope. Known as the Four Laser Guide Stars Facility (4LGSF), the new system will use four lasers to create artificial guide stars anywhere in the sky, permitting the adaptive optics systems to compensate for the blurring caused by the Earth’s atmosphere. ESO and industry partners have together built the brightest laser guide stars used on any telescope. They will extend the VLT’s ability to produce some of the sharpest images of celestial objects available from ...

16 March 2016: On 15 February ESO announced its first social media gathering, launching a call to keen social media users from ESON countries interested in visiting its observatory sites in Chile. In all, more than 250 entries were received. After much deliberation, eight entrants were chosen to join the #MeetESO gathering, which is timed to coincide with the 2016 transit of Mercury. The eight participants selected to join the inaugural #MeetESO social media gathering are: Lorna Aguilar, Chile, http://www.twitter.com/lornibaby, http://www.facebook.com/lornibaby Loïc Bommersbach, France, https://twitter.com/Leauickque, https://www.facebook.com/leauickque Anne Grudzien, Germany, https://twitter.com/cpamoa/, https://www.facebook.com/blogcpamoa Jane MacArthur, UK, https://twitter.com/Jane_MacArthur, https://www.facebook.com/jane.macarthur.10 Ian O'Neill, USA, http://www.twitter.com/astroengine, https://www.facebook.com/astroengine Sergio Sancevero, Brazil, http://twitter.com/spacetoday1, http://facebook.com/spacetoday Remco Timmermans, The Netherlands, https://twitter.com/timmermansr, https://www.facebook.com/rtimmermans Cristian Westphal, Brazil, https://twitter.com/C_e_Astronomia, https://www.facebook.com/cristianreis1995 The selected participants will travel to Chile to visit some of the world’s most exciting astronomical facilities: the Very Large Telescope (VLT) — the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory — and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter ...

15 March 2016: The winners of the 2015 art&science@ESO Residency Award are Quadrature, a group of artists from Berlin, Germany. The group consists of Jan Bernstein, Sebastian Neitsch and Juliane Götz. Together they describe themselves as “an atelier for arts, robotics and light”, and, unsurprisingly, they all share a love for machines and outer space. Part of the European Digital Art & Science Network, this award is the result of the ongoing cooperation between ESO and Ars Electronica. The winners were selected from a total of 322 entrants from 55 countries who responded to the 2015 Open Call. Quadrature will take up a residency at one of ESO’s observatories in Chile, followed by a month at the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Linz, Austria where they will develop and create new work inspired by the visit to ESO. ESO congratulates Quadrature on their receipt of this award and looks forward to an inspiring and ...

14 March 2016: In 2014, Dutch astronomer Frans Snik designed a model of ESO’s European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) using LEGO® components. Following on from the success of that design (more than ten models have been built by enthusiastic individuals worldwide since it was published), Snik has now dedicated some of his spare time to designing a LEGO® model of one of the Unit Telescopes that make up ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). For almost 20 years now, the VLT has been amazing astronomers with its extraordinary capabilities. One of the largest telescope facilities in the world, the VLT consists of four independent telescopes that can be operated together to make a very powerful facility. Now ESO is building its big brother, the ELT, that will extend our reach even further into the heavens. You may not be able to build your own full-size versions of these telescopes, but the models are a ...

10 March 2016: The latest issue of the free magazine Science in School is now available online and in printed form. This European journal for science teachers offers inspiring articles, fun games and hands-on activities for schools in every issue. This issue marks ten years since Science in School was first published. Accordingly, it includes a few reminiscences about the scientific advances of the last decade, as well as a look back at some of the most popular articles in Science in School. Some other highlights of this issue are: Sports in a spin; Analysing art in the Louvre; Sunspots on a rotating Sun; and “Eggsperiments” for Easter. Science in School is published by EIROforum, a collaboration between eight European intergovernmental scientific research organisations, of which ESO is a member. The journal addresses science teaching across Europe and across disciplines, highlighting the best in teaching and cutting-edge research. Numerous articles, as well as ...

4 March 2016: ESO’s observatories in Chile are located at such incredibly dark sites that normally the only thing illuminating them on a moonless night is the faint light from the billions of stars in the Milky Way. But even the darkest sky is not completely dark. This ESOcast describes the magnificent natural light phenomenon known as Zodiacal light, that sometimes casts a ghostly glow in the skies above ESO’s telescopes. It is the glow of sunlight as it is reflected towards us by dust in the plane of the Solar System, dust that is created by collisions between asteroids and the evaporation of comets. Yet another of the natural wonders that astronomers at ESO’s observatories are lucky enough to witness for themselves; we hope that you too will enjoy the Zodiacal light show! You can subscribe to the ESOcasts in iTunes, receive future episodes on YouTube or follow us on Vimeo. Many ...

15 February 2016: ESO is organising its first social media gathering at its sites in Chile to coincide with the 2016 transit of Mercury. #MeetESO will be a meeting dedicated exclusively to keen social media users from ESON countries who enjoy sharing information about astronomy. Selected participants should travel to Chile between 7 and 12 May 2016. #MeetESO will take participants to the Very Large Telescope (VLT) — the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the largest ground-based astronomical project in existence. Participants will travel to the most arid desert in the world and climb to 5000 metres above sea level. They will be accommodated at ESO’s Residencia, the astronomers’ hotel and the building apparently blown up in one of the James Bond movies. The programme also includes: night-time observations from one of the best spots on Earth, day-time observations of the transit of Mercury, a ...

12 February 2016: ESO invites you to take part in the third Photo Nightscape Awards (PNA) — an international competition for astrophotographers. As a partner in the competition, which is organised by Ciel et Espace Photos, ESO will arrange for the winner of the Nightscape category to visit the Paranal Observatory in northern Chile, home of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). The competition categories for adult entrants are: Nightscape, Timelapse, and In Town, and they are open to photographers from all countries. The PNA Junior category, for entrants under 18 years old, is reserved for French nationals only. Anyone wishing to take part in the competition should submit a registration form, their photo or timelapse sequence and, if they are under 18 years of age, a parental consent form, to the following email address by 30 September 2016: pna@photonightscapeawards.com. For more detailed information, please refer to the competition rules on the dedicated web ...