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
AT1+AT2+AT3
2009
- June, 2009:
The last part of the VST, the M1 cell, arrived to Paranal this month. Engineering activities will now continuously ramp up throughout the second semester of 2009, aiming for a start of operations of the VST in 2010.
2008
- November, 2008:
After a successful period of technical activities, the LGS facility is now fully offered with both NACO and SINFONI.
- 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
2009
- July, 2009:
The UVES red-arm is schduled to be recomissioned July 10-12 and will be offered onward.
ISAAC will be removed from UT1 at the end of this month, and remounted to UT3 early September to help balancing pressure factor across the UTs.
- April, 2009:
The two FORSes have ben merged into a single instrument, FORS2, which is still offered at UT1, but with polarimetric capabilities, starting P83.
X-SHOOTER has been moved to UT2 for continuation of commissioning and is scheduled to start operations next semester (P84).
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.
- April 6, 2009: La Silla Astroclimatology information (weather, seeing, extinction) was moved to a new location and can now be found on the mean navigation menu of the La Silla Facilities pages. Additional La Silla astroclimatology information will be added here.
- February 11, 2009: From the second week of July, 2009, observations will be carried out from a new control room located in the administration building.
- February 11, 2009: A new page describing the way that operations will run after P83 (ie from October 2009) is available here.
- April 22, 2008: A document that explains how to interface visitor instruments with focal stations of La Silla telescopes is available (2.8 MB PDF format).
- March 27, 2007: The dome of the 3.6m has been fully restored, and moves with nominal speed.
- October 05, 2006: The dome of the 3.6m enters an extended period of corrective maintenance. Science operations at the 3.6m is temporarily suspended until further notice.
- May 17, 2006: A Trio of Neptunes discovered with HARPS, see ESO PR 18/06
- January 26, 2006: A 5.5M_earth planet discovered with the 1.54m Danish telescope.