Announcements

20 June 2014: Yesterday, on 19 June 2014, a major milestone towards construction of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) was reached. Part of the 3000-metre peak of Cerro Armazones was blasted, as a step towards levelling the summit, paving the way for the largest optical/infrared telescope in the world. The groundbreaking event was marked at Paranal Observatory, 20 kilometres away from the blasting, and was attended by VIPs from both Chile and the ESO Member States as well as representatives of the local communities, senior officials from the project and ESO staff. This Video News Release for broadcasters provides a closer look at the event. Note that only natural sound is provided. More information in press release eso1419.

19 June 2014: ESO has signed an agreement with the company Grupo SAESA to connect its sites at Cerro Paranal and Cerro Armazones to the Chilean electric power grid. The new connection will reduce costs and provide greater reliability and stability, as well as reduce the observatory’s carbon footprint. The remoteness of the Atacama Desert presents significant challenges to ESO’s operations at its ALMA and Paranal observing sites as they currently have no connection to the Chilean power grid [1], relying instead on their own supply of energy. A power generating station currently operates at Paranal to supply the observatory [2]. Despite the addition of the VISTA and VST survey telescopes, power use has remained stable over the past few years at Paranal. As just one example, a new, more modern laser guide star was recently installed at Paranal (ann11039), effectively reducing the power consumption to less than a tenth of the old ...

16 June 2014: The final antenna for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) project has been taken up to the high-level site at the ALMA Observatory, 5000 metres above sea level. Its arrival completes the complement of 66 ALMA antennas on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile — where they will in future work together as one giant telescope. The 66th ALMA antenna was transported to the Array Operations Site (AOS) on Friday 13 June 2014. It had been delivered to the ALMA Observatory for final testing in October 2013 (eso1342). The 12-metre diameter dish is the 25th and final European antenna to be transported up to the Chajnantor Plateau on . It will work alongside its European predecessors, as well as 25 North American 12-metre antennas and 16 East Asian (four 12-metre and twelve 7-metre) antennas. The global ALMA collaboration is the largest ground-based astronomical project in existence. ...

3 June 2014: On 3 June 2014, during the 131st meeting of the ESO Council, the Spanish delegation informed the Council that the Spanish Council of Ministers had approved the participation of Spain in the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) supplementary programme. The Council very much welcomed the statement of the Spanish delegation and unanimously approved the participation of Spain in the E-ELT programme. The ESO Council and the ESO Executive are delighted that all ESO Member States are now in the E-ELT programme. Spain joined ESO in July 2006 and its membership was ratified by the Spanish Parliament in February 2007. Further details of the country’s extensive involvement with ESO are available here. Spain will be the fourteenth ESO Member State to join the E-ELT programme. The total investment from Spain amounts to a total of about 38 million euros. The European Extremely Large Telescope is expected to yield great advances in ...

30 May 2014: As an additional part of the Austrian contribution when it joined ESO, two specialist teams from institutes in Austria have developed software tools that offer significant improvements over traditional methods. A team from the University of Innsbruck [1] has developed atmospheric correction algorithms and software methods, and at the University of Vienna [2], a team of astronomers and mathematicians has developed software for the automatic combination of data from separate astronomical observations in order to create final mosaicked products. The new atmospheric correction approach models and corrects for the influence of the Earth’s atmosphere on observational data obtained with ground-based telescopes. It saves valuable observing time whilst allowing very accurate correction — leading to a more efficient use of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Stefan Kimeswenger from the University of Innsbruck says: “We are convinced that the daily scientific work carried out by astronomers conducting telescope observations becomes much easier ...

20 May 2014: A new prize called the De Zeeuw–Van Dishoeck Graduation Prize for Astronomy has been established to encourage young talent in astronomy in the Netherlands. It is named after ESO Director General, Tim De Zeeuw and Ewine van Dishoeck, respectively Professor of Theoretical Astronomy and Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at the University of Leiden. The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) officially announced the new prize at its annual meeting on 17 May 2014. The award consists of a certificate and cash prize of 3000 euros and will be awarded annually to the the best masters thesis in the field of astronomy written by a student studying at a Dutch university. “Smart students are the future of our field and we would like to encourage students to conduct independent, innovative research as early as possible,” said Ewine van Dishoeck, who, together with ESO Director General, Tim de Zeeuw, has ...

16 May 2014: On Thursday 19 June 2014 there will be a media event at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile to mark the blasting of the top of Cerro Armazones, the 3000-metre peak that will be the home of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). To enable people from around the world to witness first-hand this exciting milestone, a live video stream will be webcast on Livestream from 16:30 UTC until around 18:30 UTC [1]. Limited places are still available for members of the media to attend in person the ceremony and to visit ESO’s Paranal Observatory. Please express your interest before Friday 23 May by filling out the ESO media visit form, noting that you wish to attend the E-ELT Groundbreaking under “Objective of the Visit.” Please note that further details for media are available here. Television broadcasters who cannot make it to the event will be offered full broadcast quality ...

12 May 2014: ESO invites you to take part in AstroCamera 2014 — an international competition in support of the popularisation of astronomy and astrophotography. As an honorary sponsor of the competition organised by the Hewelianum Centre, ESO will award prizes for the honourable mentions in the form of books and DVDs, while the winners will receive grants from the organisers. Launched initially on 28 January 2011 in conjunction with the 400th anniversary of the birth of the 17th century astronomer, Johannes Hevelius, the competition is open to all astronomy and astrophotography enthusiasts. The life and achievements of Hevelius, a renowned observer of the night sky, have been an inspiration for the Hewelianum Centre to make the AstroCamera competition a regular event. This is the fourth time it has been held. The competition is organised into the following categories: Category I: deep sky objects (photographs of star clusters, galaxies, nebulae, etc.), Category II: ...

9 May 2014: The ESO Ultra HD Expedition may now be over, but there is much work being done behind-the-scenes to process and combine all the footage the team has taken — a staggering 10 TB of images and video. With four times the resolution of HD, Ultra HD takes our view of the night sky into a new, immersive dimension. The expedition team can now present some of their first results in dramatic Ultra HD footage — bringing the Universe closer than ever before. While the production of Ultra HD TV displays and cameras has flourished, very little Ultra HD content has been made universally available until now. ESO is now changing this by delivering free Ultra HD content to all, from consumer to broadcaster, under a very liberal licensing model. A little over a month ago, ESO’s videographer Herbert Zodet and the three ESO Photo Ambassadors: Yuri Beletsky, Christoph Malin and ...

5 May 2014: During the course of a visit by the ESO Director General, Tim de Zeeuw, to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, an agreement was signed between ESO and the IAC to perform experiments at the Teide Observatory related to forefront technology in the field of laser guide stars for adaptive optics. This technique will shortly be used at the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) and will be essential to the successful operation of the future 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) to be built by ESO in Chile. This collaboration between the IAC and ESO is intended to optimise aspects of laser guide star systems. These laser systems are some of the technology used in the technique of adaptive optics, which compensates for the atmospheric turbulence that affects ground-based observations. An artificial guide star is produced by shining a powerful laser into the sky — ...

15 April 2014: ESO’s Paranal–Armazones site in Chile has been shortlisted as one of two potential sites in the southern hemisphere for the international Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) — a large array for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy. This is an important step towards the realisation of the project and if the site is selected, this will open up a new frontier for ESO. On 10 April 2014 Government representatives from the 12 of the countries [1] involved in the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) project met in Munich and decided to start negotiations with the two sites — Aar in Namibia and ESO's Paranal–Armazones site in Chile — keeping Leoncito in Argentina as a third option. The CTA project is an initiative to build the next generation of ground-based, very high energy gamma-ray instruments. The CTA project aims to use detection of high-energy gamma-rays to provide a deeper insight into the high-energy Universe. The representatives ...

4 April 2014: Auer Weber has won a Best in Interior and Architecture award for the ESO Headquarters extension project at the Architecture, Interior, Technical Solutions (AIT), Awards 2014. After being shortlisted as one of six finalists in the category of Office/Administration, the ESO Headquarters extension project went on to receive a special mention at the award ceremony at the Light+Building Trade Fair 2014 held in Frankfurt, Germany on 2 April 2014. The AIT Award was first launched in 2012 and immediately became one of the largest competitions for architecture and interior design worldwide. An internationally renowned jury of architects and interior designers judge the awards — this year from a total of 573 submitted works from 31 countries. The award is divided into eight different categories [1] where all types of architectural projects and interior spaces can be submitted. On 10 March 2014, an international jury selected the ten to fifteen best ...

4 April 2014: During the week of 16 June 2014 there will be a major media event at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile to mark the blasting of the top of Cerro Armazones, the 3000-metre peak that will be the home of the European Extremely Large Telescope. The ceremony will be attended by VIPs from both Chile and the ESO Member States as well as representatives of the local communities, senior officials from the project and ESO staff. It will be a significant milestone in the construction of the largest optical/infrared telescope in the world. Members of the media are invited to attend in person to both witness the ceremony and to visit ESO’s Paranal Observatory at its spectacular site in the Atacama Desert. Please express your interest by filling out the ESO media visit form, noting that you wish to attend the E-ELT mountain blasting event under “Objective of the Visit.” ...

24 March 2014: A new 22-watt laser has now been accepted from the system supplier TOPTICA and its partner MPB following nearly five years of sustained collaboration and effort (see ann1045, ann1048, ann11039, ann12012 and ESOcast 34). This laser system will form part of the Adaptive Optics Facility at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) [1]. This laser, and four further similar units (including one spare) that will be delivered later, constitute key elements of the new facility and this acceptance marks a major step forward for the project. Five years ago the options for obtaining high power, reliable lasers in a compact format suitable for the requirements of the Adaptive Optics Facility were very limited. But now new technology and dedicated research and development have changed the landscape. After three months of acceptance testing at ESO, the project team was very happy with the performance of the new hardware, which holds great promise ...

14 March 2014: The civil works for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) have begun. The Chilean company, ICAFAL Ingeniería y Construcción S.A. (ICAFAL), has started construction of a road to the summit of Cerro Armazones. Currently there is no paved road from the public highway to the top of the mountain. The road construction work is expected to take 16 months and will provide access to the summit for the future construction work on the giant telescope. Once complete, the road will be 11 metres wide in total, with an asphalt paved driveway of 7 metres width. ICAFAL will also be responsible for the levelling of the top of the mountain later this year and additional civil works. The peak must be modified to create a platform to construct the telescope and other supporting facilities. The start of telescope operations is planned for early in the next decade, when the E-ELT will ...

19 February 2014: In our latest episode of the ESOcast, we delve into the history of telescope mirrors and their evolution over time. Enormous telescope mirrors allow astronomers to peer much deeper into the night sky than the tiny light-collecting area of the human eye permits. In this episode, the reason for the ever-growing size of telescopes is explored as the story behind these flexible giants is told. The challenges of building larger yet lighter mirrors have paved the way for innovative thinking and have consequently led to telescope designs such as ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT) and the future European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). To find out how and why such designs revolutionised telescope mirror design, explore the past, present and future of telescope mirror design in ESOcast 63: Flexible Giants — The Evolution of Telescope Mirrors. More Information The ESOcast is a video podcast series dedicated to bringing you the latest ...

13 February 2014: As part of the Austrian contribution when it joined ESO, a specialist team from institutes in Linz [1] has developed adaptive optics algorithms and software methods that are much faster than those using more traditional approaches. These methods are used for the correction of images that are degraded due to atmospheric turbulence — and are in particular intended for use with the future 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). The challenging goal was to invent a new and different approach to this problem that is as effective as current techniques while, at the same time, greatly reducing the computing load on the computer that performs the calculations. This four-year project has just completed a very successful final review. The new adaptive optics algorithms are very fast and provide excellent quality results. This leads to enormous savings in computing power required to handle adaptive optics data from the E-ELT. But probably ...

10 February 2014: ESO has recently utilised the innovative technology of 3D printing [1] to manufacture moulds for the casting of two new telescope components. These are required for the MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and are part of the Adaptive Optics Facility project. The 3D printing technique offers great promise in the manufacture of complex custom items, which are often needed in astronomical instrumentation, delivering the components more quickly and cheaply, and with greater flexibility. The first item, which was manufactured by the German firm voxeljet AG, is the structural part of a new sensor arm [2] that was installed in the telescope to work with the MUSE instrument. This change was also needed to accommodate the GALACSI adaptive optics module to be installed in 2015. The sensor arm is a metallic structure that is used to hold three flat mirrors [3], which feed light beams into ...

4 February 2014: In December 2011, the French company Safran–Reosc delivered their first thin shell Zerodur mirror to ESO (ann12015). The company has now topped this by delivering a second shell mirror [1] of even higher quality than the first. Both mirrors are a mere 2 millimetres thin but 1.12 metres in diameter, and will be crucial for the upgrade of Unit Telescope 4 of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to a fully adaptive system [2]. A thin shell mirror is deformed several thousand times per second to compensate for turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere. The result is a much sharper image, allowing astronomers to study the Universe in greater detail than possible before. The new shell features many improvements. It has a surface accuracy that is better by a factor of five than the older one and very small forces are needed to correct the shape of the mirror’s surface, half that ...

10 December 2013: At a ceremony at ESO’s Vitacura offices in Santiago on 9 December 2013 the ESO Director General, Tim de Zeeuw, and Jorge Letelier Lynch from the Chilean company ICAFAL Ingeniería y Construcción S.A., signed a contract for the construction of a road to the summit of Cerro Armazones, the levelling of the top of the mountain and additional civil works. The ceremony was also attended by representatives of the ESO project team. Cerro Armazones will be the site of the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). The 3000-metre peak is located twenty kilometres from ESO’s Paranal Observatory, in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. The work specified in the contract will begin in March 2014 and is expected to take 16 months. It includes the laying and maintenance of a paved road, the construction of the summit platform and the construction of a service trench to the summit. These civil ...