The telescope eyepiece!

Astronomers using today's very large telescopes do not look through an eyepiece to see what the telescope is looking at. Instead, an image is passed from the telescope to a computer and displayed on a screen - inside a nice warm control room. Here we see one of the screens in the control room of ESO's 3.6-metre telescope at its observatory at La Silla in Chile. Via the screen, the details of the telescope's various systems are available to astronomers, who can manage the observing schedule and make adjustments as needed.

Pale Red Dot is an international search for an Earth-like exoplanet around the closest star to us, Proxima Centauri. It will use HARPS, attached to the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla Observatory, as well as the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT) and the Burst Optical Observer and Transient Exploring System (BOOTES). The public will see how teams of astronomers with different specialities work together to collect, analyse and interpret data, which may or may not be able to confirm the presence of an Earth-like planet orbiting our nearest neighbour. The outreach campaign consists of blog posts and social media updates on the Pale Red Dot Twitter account and using the hashtag #PaleRedDot. For more information visit the Pale Red Dot website: http://www.palereddot.org