1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:06,000 Astronomers are observing the sky at ESO’s Paranal Observatory 2 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:09,000 in the Chilean Atacama Desert. 3 00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:12,000 In the course of the night, the telescopes on the mountain 4 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:20,000 will collect around 125 gigabytes of data, enough to fill more than 25 DVDs. 5 00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:22,000 Until now, sending this huge amount of data 6 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:26,000 back to ESO Headquarters in Garching, Germany, every day 7 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:29,000 was a massive technical challenge. 8 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:34,000 But a new, fast link promises to make these difficulties a thing of the past. 9 00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:40,000 This is the ESOcast! 10 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:43,000 Cutting-edge science and life behind the scenes of ESO, 11 00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:45,000 the European Southern Observatory. 12 00:00:45,000 --> 00:00:52,000 Exploring the Universe’s ultimate frontier with our host Dr J, a.k.a. Dr Joe Liske. 13 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:58,000 Hello and welcome to another episode of the ESOcast. 14 00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:02,000 Today we are going to visit the barren landscape of the Chilean Atacama desert. 15 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:06,000 Here, an international consortium that includes ESO 16 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:10,000 has recently finished installing a new high-speed data cable. 17 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:13,000 This is part of a project to improve the communications link between 18 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:17,000 the Paranal Observatory and ESO headquarters in Germany. 19 00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:25,000 The project is called Enabling Virtual Access to Latin American Southern Observatories, 20 00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:27,000 or EVALSO for short. 21 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:32,000 It is part-funded by the European Commission’s FP7 programme. 22 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:38,000 ESO Headquarters in Garching a few weeks before EVALSO’s completion. 23 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:45,000 This site is five time zones and eleven and a half thousand kilometres away from Paranal. 24 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:51,000 The night might be over for the astronomers in Chile, but work is in full swing here, 25 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:56,000 with powerful servers downloading and archiving the new observations from the VLT. 26 00:01:57,000 --> 00:01:59,000 Because of limited bandwidth in the microwave connection 27 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:02,000 between Paranal and the internet data backbone, 28 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:06,000 it isn’t always possible to get observations through straight away. 29 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:13,000 Most of the time, VLT data arrives within a few minutes, but sometimes it takes hours. 30 00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:17,000 Delays of this magnitude aren’t really a problem, 31 00:02:17,000 --> 00:02:20,000 but the operation of the recently commissioned VISTA, 32 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:23,000 the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, 33 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:25,000 poses much bigger challenges 34 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:31,000 as it produces about four times as much data as the VLT every night. 35 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:37,000 In the past, the connection between the observatory and the outside world 36 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:40,000 consisted of a microwave link, which was somewhat limited. 37 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:44,000 Even after an upgrade in the spring, it was only able to transfer data 38 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:48,000 at about the same rate as your broadband internet connection at home. 39 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:52,000 Now remember, this had to serve a whole astronomical facility 40 00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:56,000 with several world-class telescopes as well as the usual internet and email traffic 41 00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:00,000 of the more than 100 staff that work there. 42 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:03,000 So this meant that bandwidth had to be rationed. 43 00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:07,000 In particular, the data from VISTA could not be sent through this link. 44 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:12,000 Since the data rate from VISTA far exceeded the capabilities of the microwave link, 45 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:16,000 the observations from this telescope had to be saved on hard disks first, 46 00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:19,000 and then physically shipped back to Europe. 47 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:24,000 A simple, but somewhat impractical solution for a state-of-the-art observatory. 48 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:34,000 At the heart of EVALSO is 100 km of newly laid data cable, 49 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:39,000 connecting the Chilean city of Antofagasta and two observatories: 50 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:42,000 Paranal and Cerro Armazones. 51 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:47,000 Armazones and its nearby peak currently host the observatory 52 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:49,000 of the Ruhr-University of Bochum, 53 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:55,000 and if all goes to plan, the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) 54 00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:58,000 will be built on this mountaintop in the coming decade. 55 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:01,000 In practical use, 56 00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:05,000 EVALSO is more than a hundred times quicker than the old microwave link, 57 00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:08,000 and it can be upgraded to be faster still. 58 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:09,000 With EVALSO, 59 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:16,000 a whole DVD movie can be sent from Paranal to ESO Headquarters in a matter of seconds. 60 00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:20,000 On the microwave link that would have taken more than an hour! 61 00:04:20,000 --> 00:04:25,000 And this means that EVALSO doesn’t just make ESO’s work faster and easier. 62 00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:28,000 It opens up the possibility of new ways of working 63 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:31,000 for the staff and users of the observatories. 64 00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:35,000 And it all comes down to this. 65 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:38,000 At the core of this cable is a bundle of plastic optical fibres. 66 00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:42,000 Now each of these is only about twice as thick as a human hair, 67 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:45,000 and the whole thing is surrounded by padding and a tough skin. 68 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:50,000 Digital information is encoded as a series of extremely short flashes of light. 69 00:04:50,000 --> 00:04:54,000 These are sent down the fibre, and decoded at the other end. 70 00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:56,000 It’s the same tried and tested technology 71 00:04:56,000 --> 00:04:59,000 that underpins international phone and internet connections, 72 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:03,000 and it allows tremendous amounts of data to be transferred very rapidly. 73 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:09,000 So although it’s just an ordinary cable, it has the potential to trigger big changes at Paranal. 74 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:15,000 EVALSO will mean smoother and quicker operations for the VLT 75 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:18,000 and a change of pace for the VISTA telescope. 76 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:23,000 Staff in Europe will now be able to work remotely with their colleagues in Chile, 77 00:05:23,000 --> 00:05:26,000 without having to make the long journey to Paranal, 78 00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:29,000 because videoconferencing will be easier and smoother. 79 00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:33,000 In the case of sudden events like gamma-ray bursts, 80 00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:35,000 which can only be observed for a few hours, 81 00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:40,000 this means that experts far away could be able to participate fully in the action 82 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:42,000 almost as if they were there. 83 00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:46,000 This is crucial since there isn’t enough time to travel to the observatory 84 00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:49,000 before the gamma-ray burst fades away. 85 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:54,000 For VISTA, the changes will be more fundamental. 86 00:05:54,000 --> 00:06:00,000 Soon, the data from this telescope will be sent back to Europe immediately for analysis. 87 00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:05,000 So instead of a long wait of up to ten days while the hard disks are shipped to Germany, 88 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:08,000 staff at ESO Headquarters will have virtually instant access. 89 00:06:08,000 --> 00:06:11,000 With the work completed and the testing over, 90 00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:13,000 EVALSO is now coming into service. 91 00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:19,000 As a result, this remote mountaintop in Chile doesn’t feel quite as remote any more. 92 00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:22,000 This is Dr J signing off for the ESOcast. 93 00:06:22,000 --> 00:06:25,000 Join me again next time for another cosmic adventure. 94 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:31,000 ESOcast is produced by ESO, the European Southern Observatory. 95 00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:35,000 ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the pre-eminent intergovernmental science and technology organisation in astronomy, 96 00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:38,000 designing, constructing and operating the world’s most advanced ground-based telescopes. 97 00:06:40,000 --> 00:06:45,000 Transcription by ESO ; translation by — 98 00:06:52,000 --> 00:06:56,000 Now that you've caught up with ESO, 99 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:01,000 head 'out of this world' with Hubble. 100 00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:10,000 The Hubblecast highlights the latest discoveries of the world´s most recognized and prized space observatory, 101 00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:16,000 the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope