La Silla Paranal Observatory News

The page contains important news and events of the La Silla Paranal Observatory. It also covers some important telescope and instruments news from the La Silla, Paranal and APEX sites.

Paranal News

The section provides the latest telescope and instruments new from the Paranal Site. Older news from Paranal prior to 2006 can be found in the Previous News page.

Telescope News

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Photo G. Hüdepohl

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HAWK-I @ UT4 HAWK-I on NAS B of UT4 ready for its first commissioning

2008

  • August, 28, 2008:

    Following the LGS recovery actions which took place at the end of July, it has been decided to resume operations of SINFONI with the laser (service mode only). The use of the laser with NACO is still waiting for the results of a commissioning run scheduled for November 2008. Moreover, due to the intrinsic delays in getting the LGS system in operations, the commissioning of the seeing-enhancer mode with SINFONI has been postponed to early 2009. Updated news will be posted on this webpage when they become available.

  • June, 26, 2008:

    Although substantial improvements were made to the LGS during the recent technical activities that took place at UT4, it was decided that an additional set of recovery actions was needed - to be scheduled end of July 2008. Until then, the LGSF remains unavailable for science operations. Please, continue to check this webpage for the latest news on the LGSF recovery activities.

  • May, 23, 2008:

    LGSF recovery activities have been extended until mid-June 2008. As a result, the LGSF remains unavailable for science operations. Depending on the success of the June LGS recovery, executions of some science programs in Service Mode could resume by the end of July 2008.

    News on the ongoing recovery activities will continue to be posted here.

  • April, 30, 2008:

    The continued degradation of the performance, reliability, and availability of the Laser Guide Star Facility (LGSF) has forced to Observatory to take this facility out of operation as of April 1st, 2008.

    All service mode programs requiring the LGS are on hold. Visitor runs with the LGS will have to be cancelled.

    After a deep analysis of the situation a detailed and comprehensive recovery plan has been developed by ESO together with the LGS partner institutes to remedy this situation. The plan was released on April 25 and foresees the implementation of immediate short-term actions for the period April - July to recover the LGSF performance as required for successful science operation (i.e., the performance as of June 2007).

    A first critical milestone of the recovery plan is to have the LGSF operational for mid-May where a LGS commissioning together with NACO has been scheduled earlier.

    In parallel to the implementation of the short-term plan a medium-term plan for the LGSF is developed to improve its reliability and performance on system level. This plan is expected to be released in October this year.

  • April 1st, 2008: AMBER: Fringe tracking with FINITO is availabe to visitor mode PIs
  • April 1st, 2008: HAWK-I: start of Science Operation

2007

  • July 2, 2007: recoating of M1 of UT1 successfully completed
  • March 8, 2007: recoating of M2 of UT2 successfully completed
  • January 2007: AT4 commissioned and accepted for operations

2006

  • December 5, 2006: UT2 recoating of M1/M3 completed
  • September 5, 2006: UT4 recoating of M1/M3 completed
  • May 12, 2006: First recoating of M2 of UT1 successfully completed

Instrument News

2007

  • August 1st, 2007: HAWKI: First Light of the instrument mounted at UT4.
  • April 1st, 2007: AMBER: start of Science Operation with 3 ATs. Fringe tracking with FINITO is availabe to visitor mode PIs
  • April 1st, 2007: CRIRES: start of Science Operation
  • April 7, 2007: FORS1 CCD upgrade completed
  • March 25, 2007: First light for MAD, the multi-conjugate adaptive optics demonstrator
  • March 13, 2007: SINFONI: first commissioning with LGS completed
  • March 8, 2007: Installation of new FLAMES FACB guiding TCCDs completed
  • January 2007: NACO: first commissioning with LGS completed

2006

  • December 18, 2006: LGSF successfully commissioned
  • December 5, 2006: Installation of new UVES slit viewers TCCDs completed
  • October 31, 2006: DAZLE visitor instrument succesfully commissioned on UT3
  • October 29, 2006: Launch Telescope of LGSF successfully re-installed
  • June 2006: commissioning of CRIRES at UT1 started
  • April 2006: CRIRES AO system (MACAO) installed and commissioned at UT1
  • January 28, 2006: first light of the Laser Guide Star Facility LGSF at UT4

Earthquake News

2007

On December 16 at 05:10 LT another earthquake with magnitude 6.8 ( Richter) affected the north of Chile. In Paranal it was registered with a magnitude of 5.2 and a peak ground acceleration of 0.2m/s2. Neither injuries to the people nor damages to the installations have been registered.

On November 14 at 12:41 LT an earthquake with magnitude 7.7 (Richter) with epicenter north of Antofagasta affected the north of Chile. In Paranal it was registered with a magnitude of 5.7, a peak ground acceleration of 0.6m/s2 and for a duration of approx 2 minutes. This has been the strongest earthquake since 1997, the first "high risk" earthquake since the start of operation of the VLT, and the first strong earthquake since the opening of the residencia. Neither injuries to the people nor damages to the installations have been registered. After extended checkout procedures, the regular night time operations have been resumed at the sunset. All the systems have been operated without restrictions, including all four UTs (with their instruments and the LGS) and the ATs with VLTI.

Several other minor episodes have been registered in the following 24 hours without any impact on the normal VLT activities.

La Silla News

The section provides the latest telescope and instruments news from the La Silla Site.

More news can be found in the news section of theLa Silla Science Operations page.