ESO for the Public

Press Releases

eso0626 — Science Release

Looking Deep with Infrared Eyes — First data release from UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey [1]

21 July 2006: Today, British astronomers are releasing the first data from the largest and most sensitive survey of the heavens in infrared light to the ESO user community. The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) has completed the first of seven years of data collection, studying objects that are too faint to see at visible wavelengths, such as very distant or very cool objects. New data on young galaxies is already challenging current thinking on galaxy formation, revealing galaxies that are massive at a much earlier stage of development than expected. These first science results already show how powerful the full survey will be at finding rare objects that hold vital clues to how stars and galaxies in our Universe formed.

eso0625 — Organisation Release

Towards a European Extremely Large Telescope — ESO sets-up ELT Project Office

18 July 2006: ESO, the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, is taking an important step towards the realisation of a new, giant telescope for Europe's astronomers, by creating the ESO Extremely Large Telescope Project Office. It will be headed by Jason Spyromilio, formerly La Silla Paranal Observatory Director.

eso0624 — Organisation Release

Sub-millimetre Astronomy in Full Swing on Southern Skies — Impressive set of APEX Results to be published in Special Issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics

13 July 2006: The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) 12-m sub-millimetre telescope lives up to the ambitions of the scientists by providing access to the "Cold Universe" with unprecedented sensitivity and image quality. As a demonstration, no less than 26 articles based on early science with APEX are published this week in the research journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Among the many new findings, most in the field of star formation and astrochemistry, are the discovery of a new interstellar molecule, and the detection of light emitted at 0.2 mm from CO molecules, as well as light coming from a charged molecule composed of two forms of Hydrogen.

eso0623 — Science Release

Falling Onto the Dark — Rare Blob Unveiled: Evidence for Hydrogen Gas Falling onto a Dark Matter Clump?

3 July 2006: ESO's VLT has helped scientists to discover a large primordial 'blob', more than 10 billion light-years away. The most likely scenario to account for its existence and properties is that it represents the early stage in the formation of a galaxy, when gas falls onto a large clump of dark matter.

eso0622 — Photo Release

The Hooked Galaxy — ESO's VLT Image of Supernova in Interacting Galaxy

28 June 2006: Life is not easy, even for galaxies. Some indeed get so close to their neighbours that they get rather distorted. But such encounters between galaxies have another effect: they spawn new generations of stars, some of which explode. ESO's VLT has obtained a unique vista of a pair of entangled galaxies, in which a star exploded.

eso0621 — Organisation Release

ESO and Chile: 10 Years of Productive Scientific Collaboration — Tenth Anniversary of the creation of the ESO-Chile Joint Committee Fund for the development of astronomy and scientific culture

19 June 2006: ESO and the Government of Chile launched today the book "10 Years Exploring the Universe", written by the beneficiaries of the ESO-Chile Joint Committee. This annual fund provides grants for individual Chilean scientists, research infrastructures, scientific congresses, workshops for science teachers and astronomy outreach programmes for the public.

eso0620 — Photo Release

The Toucan's Diamond — VLT Image of a Unique Swarm of Stars, 47 Tuc

8 June 2006: The Southern constellation Tucana (the Toucan) is probably best known as the home of the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. But Tucana also hosts another famous object that shines thousands of lights, like a magnificent, oversized diamond in the sky: the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. More popularly known as 47 Tuc, it is surpassed in size and brightness by only one other globular cluster, Omega Centauri.

eso0619 — Science Release

Do 'Planemos' Have Progeny? — Planetary-Mass Objects Found to be Surrounded by Discs

6 June 2006: Two new studies, based on observations made with ESO's telescopes, show that objects only a few times more massive than Jupiter are born with discs of dust and gas, the raw material for planet making. This suggests that miniature versions of the solar system may circle objects that are some 100 times less massive than our Sun.

eso0618 — Science Release

Trio of Neptunes and their Belt — HARPS Instrument Finds Unusual Planetary System

18 May 2006: Using the ultra-precise HARPS spectrograph on ESO's 3.6-m telescope at La Silla (Chile), a team of European astronomers have discovered that a nearby star is host to three Neptune-mass planets. The innermost planet is most probably rocky, while the outermost is the first known Neptune-mass planet to reside in the habitable zone. This unique system is likely further enriched by an asteroid belt.

eso0617 — Photo Release

Twin Explosions In Gigantic Dusty Potato Crisp

11 May 2006: ESO's Very Large Telescope, equipped with the multi-mode FORS instrument, took an image of NGC 3190, a galaxy so distorted that astronomers gave it two names. And as if to prove them right, in 2002 it fired off, almost simultaneously, two stellar explosions, a very rare event.

eso0616 — Science Release

Physics in Universe's Youth — With ESO's VLT, Astronomers Find Molecular Hydrogen at Edge of Universe

8 May 2006: Using a quasar located 12.3 billion light-years away as a beacon, a team of astronomers detected the presence of molecular hydrogen in the farthest system ever, an otherwise invisible galaxy that we observe when the Universe was less than 1.5 billion years old, that is, about 10% of its present age. The astronomers find that there is about one hydrogen molecule for 250 hydrogen atoms. A similar set of observations for two other quasars, together with the most precise laboratory measurements, allows scientists to infer that the ratio of the proton to electron masses may have changed with time. If confirmed, this would have important consequences on our understanding of physics.

eso0615 — Photo Release

The Comet With a Broken Heart — VLT Takes Images of Disintegrating Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3

25 April 2006: On the night of April 23 to 24, ESO's Very Large Telescope observed fragment B of the comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 that had split a few days earlier. To their great surprise, the ESO astronomers discovered that the piece just ejected by fragment B was splitting again! Five other mini-comets are also visible on the image. The comet seems thus doomed to disintegrate but the question remains in how much time.

eso0614 — Photo Release

The Great Easter Egg Hunt: The Void's Incredible Richness — Huge Astronomical Image of 'Empty Space' Obtained with ESO Telescope

14 April 2006: An image made of about 300 million pixels is being released by ESO, based on more than 64 hours of observations with the Wide-Field Camera on the 2.2m telescope at La Silla (Chile). The image covers an 'empty' region of the sky five times the size of the full moon, opening an exceptionally clear view towards the most distant part of our universe. It reveals objects that are 100 million times fainter than what the unaided eye can see.

eso0613 — Photo Release

Cosmic Spider is Good Mother — VLT FORS Image of the Inner Parts of the Tarantula Nebula

7 April 2006: Hanging above the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) - one of our closest galaxies - in what some describe as a frightening sight, the Tarantula nebula is worth looking at in detail. Also designated 30 Doradus or NGC 2070, the nebula owes its name to the arrangement of its brightest patches of nebulosity that somewhat resemble the legs of a spider. This name, of the biggest spiders on Earth, is also very fitting in view of the gigantic proportions of the celestial nebula - it measures nearly 1,000 light years across!

eso0612 — Organisation Release

Bringing Science out of the Lab into the Classroom — Europe's first international, multidisciplinary journal for science teaching launched today

28 March 2006: Science is moving more rapidly than ever; one groundbreaking discovery chases the next at an incredible speed. School teachers have trouble keeping up with the pace, and many pupils call science classes "boring". Today, Europe's major research organisations launch Science in School, the first international, multidisciplinary journal for innovative science teaching, to provide a platform for communication between science teachers, practising scientists and other stakeholders in science education.

eso0611 — Science Release

The Sun's New Exotic Neighbour — Very Cool Brown Dwarf Discovered Around Star in the Solar Neighbourhood

22 March 2006: Using ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile, an international team of researchers [1] discovered a brown dwarf belonging to the 24th closest stellar system to the Sun. Brown dwarfs are intermediate objects that are neither stars nor planets. This object is the third closest brown dwarf to the Earth yet discovered, and one of the coolest, having a temperature of about 750 degrees Celsius. It orbits a very small star at about 4.5 times the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun. Its mass is estimated to be somewhere between 9 and 65 times the mass of Jupiter.

eso0610 — Science Release

The Cosmic Dance of Distant Galaxies — GIRAFFE at VLT reveals the turbulent life of distant galaxies

15 March 2006: Studying several tens of distant galaxies, an international team of astronomers found that galaxies had the same amount of dark matter relative to stars 6 billion years ago as they have now. If confirmed, this suggests a much closer interplay between dark and normal matter than previously believed. The scientists also found that as many as 4 out of 10 galaxies are out of balance. These results shed a new light on how galaxies form and evolve since the Universe was only half its current age.

eso0609 — Science Release

Cepheids and their 'Cocoons' — Interferometry Helps Discover Envelopes Around Supergiant Stars

28 February 2006: Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at Cerro Paranal, Chile, and the CHARA Interferometer at Mount Wilson, California, a team of French and North American astronomers has discovered envelopes around three Cepheids, including the Pole star. This is the first time that matter is found surrounding members of this important class of rare and very luminous stars whose luminosity varies in a very regular way. Cepheids play a crucial role in cosmology, being one of the first "steps" on the cosmic distance ladder.

eso0608 — Photo Release

A Blast To Chase — VLT Image of SN 2006X in Spiral Galaxy Messier 100

23 February 2006: Possibly similar to what our own Milky Way looks like, Messier 100 [1] is a grand design spiral galaxy that presents an intricate structure, with a bright core and two prominent arms, showing numerous young and hot massive stars as well as extremely hot knots (HII regions). Two smaller arms are also seen starting from the inner part and reaching towards the larger spiral arms.

eso0607 — Organisation Release

Man-made Star Shines in the Southern Sky — First Light for the VLT Laser Guide Star Facility

23 February 2006: Scientists celebrate another major milestone at Cerro Paranal in Chile, home of ESO's Very Large Telescope array. Thanks to their dedicated efforts, they were able to create the first artificial star in the Southern Hemisphere, allowing astronomers to study the Universe in the finest detail. This artificial laser guide star makes it possible to apply adaptive optics systems, that counteract the blurring effect of the atmosphere, almost anywhere in the sky.

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