Comunicados de Prensa

14 de Septiembre de 2005: An international team of astronomers [1] used two of the most powerful astronomical facilities available, the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Cerro Paranal and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), to conduct a detailed study of 20 low redshift quasars. For 19 of them, they found, as expected, that these super massive black holes are surrounded by a host galaxy. But when they studied the bright quasar HE0450-2958, located some 5 billion light-years away, they couldn't find evidence for an encircling galaxy. This, the astronomers suggest, may indicate a rare case of collision between a seemingly normal spiral galaxy and a much more exotic object harbouring a very massive black hole.

12 de Septiembre de 2005: An Italian team of astronomers has observed the afterglow of a Gamma-Ray Burst that is the farthest known ever. With a measured redshift of 6.3, the light from this very remote astronomical source has taken 12,700 million years to reach us. It is thus seen when the Universe was less than 900 million years old, or less than 7 percent its present age.

24 de Agosto de 2005: The southern Reticulum constellation [1] certainly isn't a big hit for amateur astronomers. This tiny, bleak and diamond-shaped constellation, not far on the sky from the Large Magellanic Cloud, is often overlooked. But recently, astronomers had a closer look at a galaxy situated inside it. And more precisely at an exploding star hosted by the spiral galaxy NGC 1559 [2].

11 de Agosto de 2005: One of the thousands of minor planets orbiting the Sun has been found to have its own mini planetary system. Astronomer Franck Marchis (University of California, Berkeley, USA) and his colleagues at the Observatoire de Paris (France) [1] have discovered the first triple asteroid system - two small asteroids orbiting a larger one known since 1866 as 87 Sylvia [2].

10 de Agosto de 2005: How does the Galaxy in which we live look like? It is almost certain that we will never be able to send a probe out of our Milky Way to take a snapshot, in the same way as the first satellites could do to give us striking images of planet Earth. But astronomers do not need this to imagine what our bigger home resembles. And they have a pretty good idea of it.

1 de Agosto de 2005: El equipo, compuesto además por científicos europeos y norteamericanos, logró medir con una precisión nunca antes alcanzada la distancia que nos separa de la galaxia espiral NGC 300, ubicada fuera del grupo de galaxias vecinas.

14 de Julio de 2005: Los astrónomos que observaron los efectos del choque contra el cometa Tempel 1 desde los principales telescopios de ESO, presentaron los primeros resultados de esta maratón científica inédita en Chile.

14 de Julio de 2005: The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) project has just passed another major milestone by successfully commissioning its new technology 12-m telescope, located on the 5100m high Chajnantor plateau in the Atacama Desert (Chile). The APEX telescope, designed to work at sub-millimetre wavelengths, in the 0.2 to 1.5 mm range, has just performed its first scientific observations. This new front-line facility will provide access to the "Cold Universe" with unprecedented sensitivity and image quality.

30 de Junio de 2005: Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, Rémi Cabanac and his European colleagues have discovered an amazing cosmic mirage, known to scientists as an Einstein Ring. This cosmic mirage, dubbed FOR J0332-3557, is seen towards the southern constellation Fornax (the Furnace), and is remarkable on at least two counts. First, it is a bright, almost complete Einstein ring. Second, it is the farthest ever found.

9 de Junio de 2005: British scientists have opened a new window on the Universe with the recent commissioning of the Visitor Instrument ULTRACAM on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.

7 de Junio de 2005: In a ceremony held in Washington, D.C. (USA) on June 6, 2005, ESO, the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the southern Hemisphere, received the coveted 21st Century Achievement Award from the Computerworld Honors Program for its visionary use of information technology in the Science category. Sybase, a main database server vendor and member of the Chairmen's Committee, nominated ESO's Data Flow System in recognition of its contributions to the global information technology revolution and its positive impact on society.

30 de Mayo de 2005: On July 4, 2005, the NASA Deep Impact spacecraft will visit Comet 9P/Tempel 1. It will launch a 360 kg impactor that should produce a crater on the surface of the comet and a plume of gas and dust.

16 de Mayo de 2005: Mrs. Maria van der Hoeven, the Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science, who travelled to the Republic of Chile, arrived at the ESO Paranal Observatory on Friday afternoon, May 13, 2005.

30 de Abril de 2005: Today, at the Annual Meeting of the US National Academy of Sciences, ESO's Director General, Dr. Catherine Cesarsky, is officially inducted into this highly prestigious society.

30 de Abril de 2005: Hoy se confirmó que una imagen captada por el Very Large Telescope (VLT) de ESO en Paranal, II Región de Chile, es la primera fotografía directa de un planeta ubicado fuera de nuestro sistema solar.

27 de Abril de 2005: El Very Large Telescope (VLT) en cerro Paranal, al sur de Antofagasta, superó la ambiciosa meta de 1.000 publicaciones científicas en tan sólo seis años de funcionamiento.

22 de Abril de 2005: The nebula N214 [1] is a large region of gas and dust located in a remote part of our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. N214 is a quite remarkable site where massive stars are forming. In particular, its main component, N214C (also named NGC 2103 or DEM 293), is of special interest since it hosts a very rare massive star, known as Sk-71 51 [2] and belonging to a peculiar class with only a dozen known members in the whole sky. N214C thus provides an excellent opportunity for studying the formation site of such stars.

20 de Abril de 2005: Brussels, April 20, 2005 - Today Europe's seven major intergovernmental research organisations, working together in the EIROforum partnership, presented their comprehensive paper on science policy, "Towards a Europe of Knowledge and Innovation", in the presence of the European Commissioner for Science and Research, Mr. Janez Potocnik and the Luxembourg Minister for Culture, Higher Education, Employment and Research, Mr. François Biltgen. Luxembourg currently holds the presidency of the European Union.

7 de Abril de 2005: Since the discovery in 1995 of the first planet orbiting a normal star other than the Sun, there are now more than 150 candidates of these so-called exoplanets known. Most of them are detected by indirect methods, based either on variations of the radial velocity or the dimming of the star as the planet passes in front of it.

22 de Marzo de 2005: Super star clusters are groups of hundreds of thousands of very young stars packed into an unbelievably small volume. They represent the most extreme environments in which stars and planets can form. Until now, super star clusters were only known to exist very far away, mostly in pairs or groups of interacting galaxies. Now, however, a team of European astronomers [1] have used ESO's telescopes to uncover such a monster object within our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, almost, but not quite, in our own backyard! The newly found massive structure is hidden behind a large cloud of dust and gas and this is why it took so long to unveil its true nature. It is known as "Westerlund 1" and is a thousand times closer than any other super star cluster known so far. It is close enough that astronomers may now probe its structure in some detail. Westerlund 1 contains hundreds of very massive stars, some shining with a brilliance of almost one million suns and some two-thousand times larger than the Sun (as large as the orbit of Saturn)! Indeed, if the Sun were located at the heart of this remarkable cluster, our sky would be full of hundreds of stars as bright as the full Moon. Westerlund 1 is a most unique natural laboratory for the study of extreme stellar physics, helping astronomers to find out how the most massive stars in our Galaxy live and die. From their observations, the astronomers conclude that this extreme cluster most probably contains no less than 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, and all of its stars are located within a region less than 6 light-years across. Westerlund 1 thus appears to be the most massive compact young cluster yet identified in the Milky Way Galaxy.