ann20025 — Announcement
Science operations restarted at Paranal following pause due to the pandemic
18 September 2020: The exceptional circumstances imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic led ESO to suspend science operations at its observatories in late March. We are now pleased to announce that minimal science operations have restarted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, in Chile’s Atacama Desert, under strict health and safety measures. After carefully assessing the pandemic development and the logistic, technical and safety constraints associated with it, ESO started to ramp-up operations at Paranal, home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in early September. Ramping up has been gradual, with observations restarting on only two of the four VLT 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (UTs). The two instruments now in operation are FORS2 on UT1, our most in-demand instrument, and UVES, a high-resolution spectrograph on UT2. While this is an important and exciting step, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic the safety of our staff remains paramount. As such, a comprehensive set of health measures has been ...