La Silla hosts several national and project telescopes. They are not operated by ESO and include the Danish 1.54-metre Telescope, the Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope, the ESO 1-metre Schmidt telescope, the Rapid Eye Mount Telescope, and the TRAPPIST telescopes, as well as the TAROT Telescope.
The Danish 1.54-metre Telescope
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The Danish 1.54-metre Telescope, built by Grubb–Parsons, has been in use at La Silla since 1979. It was completely overhauled in 1993 and is now equipped with the Danish Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera spectrograph/camera. The telescope has allowed astronomers to make several first discoveries. In 2005 astronomers showed that short, intense bursts of gamma-ray emission most likely originate from the violent collision of two merging neutron stars, ending a long debate (eso0533). In 2006, astronomers using a network of telescopes scattered across the globe, including the Danish 1.54-metre Telescope, discovered an exoplanet only about five times as massive as the Earth, and circling its parent star in about ten years (eso0603). This telescope has also been used to produce many impressive astronomical images. More information is available in this article from The Messenger and on the science pages. |
The Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope
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The Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope at La Silla was built and is operated by the Geneva Observatory, Université de Genève (Switzerland) and named in honour of the famous Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–83). It is used in conjunction with the CORALIE spectrograph to conduct high precision radial velocity measurements principally to search for large exoplanets in the southern celestial hemisphere. Its first success was the discovery of a planet in orbit around the star Gliese 86 (eso9855). Other observing programmes focus on variable stars, astroseismology, the follow-up of gamma-ray bursts, monitoring of active galactic nuclei and gravitational lenses. The CORALIE spectrograph, which started operations in June 1998, was developed through a collaboration between the Geneva Observatory and the Haute Provence Observatory (OHP) in France. It is an improved version of the ELODIE spectrograph now in operation at OHP, and with which the first exoplanet was found around the star 51 Pegasi, in 1995. CORALIE is so accurate that it can measure the motion of a star with a precision that is better than 7 m/s or 25 km/hour, i.e. about the speed of a fast human runner. |
ESO 1-metre Schmidt Telescope
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The ESO 1-metre Schmidt telescope at La Silla began its service life in 1971 using photographic plates to take wide-field images of the southern sky four degrees across — which would cover the full Moon 64 times over. The original photographic camera was decommissioned in December 1998, but the telescope now has a new lease of life as a project telescope. In 2009, a group at Yale’s Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics installed a new large camera to conduct a southern hemisphere search for new Pluto-sized dwarf planets and supernovae: the LaSilla–QUEST Variability survey. The camera is a mosaic of 112 CCDs, with a total of 160 million pixels, covering the full field of view of the telescope. The survey is expected to cover about one third of the full sky (about 15 000 square degrees repeated almost every four days). The system is fully operational and controlled remotely from Yale. This project follows the group’s northern hemisphere search at Palomar that led to the discovery of the dwarf planet population, including Eris and Sedna. |
The Rapid Eye Mount Telescope
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The Rapid Eye Mount (REM) telescope is a 60 cm rapid-reaction automatic telescope at La Silla, and since October 2002 it has been operated by the REM team for the INAF (Italian National Institute for Astrophysics), a distributed group with its headquarters at the Brera Observatory (Italy). The main purpose of the REM Telescope is to follow up promptly the afterglows of gamma-ray bursts detected by the NASA/ASI/STFC Swift satellite. REM is triggered by a signal from Swift or other satellites and quickly points to the designated area. In 2007, thanks to REM, astronomers measured the velocity of the material from the explosions known as gamma-ray bursts for the first time. The material is travelling at an extraordinary speed, more than 99.999% of the velocity of light (eso0726). More information is provided on the REM web page.
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TRAPPIST
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TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) is a 60 cm telescope at La Silla devoted to the study of planetary systems and it follows two approaches: the detection and characterisation of exoplanets around other stars and the study of comets orbiting around the Sun. The robotic telescope is operated from a control room in Liège, Belgium. The project is led by the Department of Astrophysics, Geophysics and Oceanography of the University of Liège, in close collaboration with the Geneva Observatory (Switzerland). TRAPPIST is mostly funded by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research with the participation of the Swiss National Science Foundation. The name TRAPPIST was given to the telescope to underline the Belgian origin of the project. Trappist beers are famous all around the world and most of them are Belgian. Read the TRAPPIST first light press release or go to the telescope web page. |
TAROT Telescope
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The 25 cm TAROT (Télescope à Action Rapide pour les Objets Transitoires—Rapid Action Telescope for Transient Objects) is a very fast moving optical robotic telescope on La Silla. It is able to react very quickly to a signal from a satellite indicating that a gamma-ray burst is in progress and can provide fast and accurate positions of transient events within seconds. The data from the TAROT telescope will also be useful for studying the evolution of bursts, the physics of the fireball and of the surrounding material. A twin TAROT telescope is located at the Calern observatory, in France. Both are operated by a consortium led by Michel Boër (Observatoire de Haute Provence, France). For more information please read the Messenger article. |