Annonces

6 juillet 2021: Que le spectacle commence ! L'instrument CONCERTO d'APEX voit sa première lumière Un nouvel instrument très prometteur, un spectromètre appelé CONCERTO, a réalisé avec succès ses premières observations : des images test de la nébuleuse de la Patte de Chat et de la nébuleuse du Crabe. L'instrument, installé sur le télescope Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) exploité par l'ESO, aidera les astronomes à sonder la mystérieuse et ancienne époque cosmique au cours de laquelle les premières étoiles se sont allumées. L'objectif principal de CONCERTO, qui est l'acronyme de "CarbON CII line in post-rEionisation and ReionisaTiOn epoch", est d'étudier la naissance de la première génération de galaxies. Pour ce faire, il examinera les structures cosmiques qui se sont formées entre 600 millions et 1,2 milliard d'années après le Big Bang. Cette époque, connue sous le nom de réionisation cosmique, est mal comprise et pourtant cruciale dans l'histoire du cosmos, car elle marque ...

1 juillet 2021: The ESO Annual Report 2020 is now available. It presents a summary of ESO’s many activities throughout the year. The contents include: The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on ESO, including safety measures and the impact on staff; The ramp-down of the observatories into “Safe State” in March and the ramp-up which began in September, enabling science data from Paranal, APEX and La Silla to flow again; Work that continued in the laboratories under strict safety measures, providing crucial contributions to projects, as well as progress on design, software, data-related and other projects; Further progress made both at ESO and in industry on the Extremely Large Telescope, on the Paranal Instrumentation Programme, and on ALMA development projects; How scientific exploitation of ESO data continued to flourish during the year. Among the highlights was the confirmation of the predictions of General Relativity regarding the orbital precession of the star S2 around ...

11 juin 2021: Preparations are being put in place to resume construction work on ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) at Cerro Armazones in Chile, following disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the closure of the site in mid-2020. As work on manufacturing and design elements of the ELT in Europe progressed steadily, the evolution of this complex and ambitious project, set to revolutionise modern astronomy, has been closely monitored over the past year. ESO’s ELT is now expected to deliver the first scientific observations in September 2027, about half a year after an initial “telescope technical first light”. In the last few weeks, the Italian consortium ACe (Cimolai, Astaldi) in charge of the dome and main structure construction, has started preparations to resume on-site activities on ESO’s ELT in the Chilean Atacama Desert, within the health and safety restrictions established by the country’s authorities. With this important return to work in ...

1 juin 2021: Today, ESO signed an agreement with an international consortium to build and operate MAVIS, a unique instrument to be installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) that will provide images up to three times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope. MAVIS will tackle a range of research questions, from how the first stars formed 13 billion years ago to how weather changes on the planets and moons of the Solar System. “MAVIS will be a powerful instrument that will serve a very large number of key science projects,” explains François Rigaut, a professor at the Australian National University who is leading the consortium for MAVIS. “This will include observations of our own Solar System as well as planets around other stars, and the physics of star formation, from the Milky Way to the first star clusters in the Universe.” MAVIS, which stands for Multi-conjugate-adaptive-optics-Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph, will produce ...

20 mai 2021: ESO observatories operated under challenging conditions in 2020 due to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, having to reduce and even pause scientific observations for a few months. Nonetheless, 2020 was still a very productive year for the observatory with regard to the number of papers that were published using data from ESO telescopes, mostly obtained in previous years. A recently published report from the ESO library shows that 2020 represents the fourth consecutive year that over 1000 scientific studies using ESO data were published. The majority of these publications, more than 600, used data from ESO’s flagship facility, the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and the VLT Interferometer (VLTI). Highlights include the first ever image of a multi-planet system around a Sun-like star and observing a star “dance” around a supermassive black hole. Of the 608 studies carried out using observations from the VLT and VLTI, 336 (55%) used data from the ...

31 mars 2021: The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has become a partner in a new project, launched last week, that has formed Europe’s largest ground-based astronomy network — the Opticon-RadioNet Pilot (ORP). This network fosters the collaboration of 37 institutions, including ESO, from Europe, Australia and South Africa. Within the ORP, ESO will drive knowledge transfer by organising a broad suite of training programmes for the European astronomy community, which will include observing schools across European observatories, as well as archival, instrumentation, and proposal writing workshops. In the long term, ESO will also help the ORP develop strategies to promote equal-opportunity policies and actions in the astronomy community. With 15 million EUR of funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, the ORP merges two existing astronomy networks (Opticon and RadioNet) to bring together several telescopes and arrays from around the world, providing European astronomers access to a wide range ...

2 mars 2021: La dernière édition du journal de l’ESO, The Messenger, est disponible en ligne. Ce numéro spécial est consacré au programme d’instrumentation de l’Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) de l’ESO. La sélection des instruments est une étape cruciale pour tout télescope, puisqu’elle permet de s’assurer que la communauté scientifique qu’il sert dispose des moyens nécessaires pour mener les projets scientifiques pour lesquels il a été conçu. L’ESO a travaillé de concert avec sa communauté d’astronomes et de constructeurs d’instruments afin d’établir l’ordre dans lequel les instruments conçus pour l’ELT seront construits et livrés à l’observatoire. Ce numéro du Messenger donne un aperçu du programme d’instrumentation de l’ELT. Voici quelques-uns des articles paraissant dans ce numéro spécial : “L’Instrumentation de l’ELT” “SUPER : la rétroaction des AGN au zénith cosmique (cosmic noon)” “La cartographie des étoiles les plus jeunes et les plus massives dans la Nébuleuse de la Tarentule avec MUSE-NFM” The Messenger ...

1 février 2021: Depuis sa première lumière en 2006, le spectrographe infrarouge CRIRES à haute résolution du Very Large Telescope (VLT) de l’ESO a permis plusieurs découvertes scientifiques exceptionnelles. Revu et amélioré, le nouveau CRIRES+, qui a maintenant vu sa première lumière, va se baser sur le travail de son prédécesseur pour étendre la recherche d’exoplanètes de type super-Terre potentiellement habitables. CRIRES+, un instrument construit par l’ESO en collaboration avec un consortium d’instituts européens, observera le ciel à la recherche de super-Terres situées dans les zones habitables des étoiles de faible masse les plus proches c’est-à-dire les orbites planétaires dans lesquelles les scientifiques considèrent qu’une planète pourrait accueillir la vie. Les planètes de ce type sont difficiles à détecter, en raison de leur masse relativement faible. Grâce à CRICES+, les scientifiques seront mieux équipés pour chercher ces super-Terres, puisqu’ils pourront observer la plupart des étoiles de notre voisinage stellaire. On compte également parmi ...

22 janvier 2021: L’Observatoire Européen Austral (ESO) est un témoignage de recherche, d’innovation, et de collaboration en Europe, avec un impact inestimable et de longue portée sur la société. La nouvelle publication «Les avantages de l’ESO pour la Société » explore les contributions de l’ESO envers ses Etats-Membres à travers cinq domaines : en science et ingénierie, en économie et innovation, en développement de talents, en éducation et projet pédagogique, et en collaboration internationale et stratégie. En science et ingénierie, l’ESO et ses télescopes ont été essentiels pour plusieurs découvertes révolutionnaires. En 2020, par exemple, un lauréat du Prix Nobel en Physique a été récompensé pour sa recherche sur le trou noir de la Voie Lactée, faite avec les télescopes de l’ESO. L’ESO permet des découvertes telles que celle-ci en bâtissant et exploitant des observatoires de renommée mondiale, repoussant les limites de l’ingénierie. Les innovations de l’ESO s’étendent au-delà de ses compétences; par ...

14 janvier 2021: L’ESO a lancé son nouveau site web pour fournir une abondance d’informations sur son Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), le prochain observatoire qui étudiera l’Univers depuis le désert de l’Atacama au Chili. Il est conçu pour une large audience, autant pour le grand public que pour les experts en astronomie, qui pourront s’y précipiter pour découvrir le nouveau télescope, ses instruments, et comment il contribuera à étendre notre connaissance du cosmos. Le site web met en avant quelques unes des plus importantes questions scientifiques, auxquelles les astronomes espèrent que l’ELT permettra de répondre. En complément : des visuels du télescope à couper le souffle, sa structure périphérique et ses divers instruments et miroirs. Il présente également des faits intéressants sur l'ELT, qui sera le plus grand télescope au monde observant en lumière visible et infrarouge avec un miroir principal de 39 mètres, une partie de l'histoire de ce télescope ambitieux et ...

16 décembre 2020: On Friday 11 December, ESO Director General Xavier Barcons received the Order of Bernardo O’Higgins Grand Cross, at a ceremony chaired by Carolina Valdivia, the Chilean Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs. The Order Bernardo O’Higgins is a recognition by the Chilean State for foreign citizens’ outstanding work in the fields of art, science, education, industry, commerce or humanitarian or social cooperation. During the ceremony, held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Barcons received the award for paving new ways towards a deeper understanding between Chile and ESO. “On behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I would like to extend our sincere thanks for your collaboration and for helping us boost the establishment of a new astronomical paradigm in our country that is based on a regional, fair, inclusive and citizen-oriented approach. This includes cutting edge cooperation agreements, through which Chile –with its National Research and Development Agency– and ESO can ...

8 décembre 2020: Linda Tacconi, a senior astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany, has been elected as the next president of ESO’s main governing body, the Council. “I am honoured to have been chosen as president of the ESO Council,” Tacconi says. “The coming years represent a very exciting time for the organisation, as the first light of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope approaches and current facilities, such as ESO’s Very Large Telescope, continue at the forefront of astronomical research. The various ESO observatories will work in synergy, furthering our knowledge of the Universe and strengthening ESO’s position as a world-leader in ground-based astronomy. I look forward to sharing in this experience and working with Council to support ESO in maintaining this leadership role.” Tacconi completed her PhD at the University of Massachusetts, USA, in 1988 and later worked at the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy, ...

4 décembre 2020: The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), ESO’s new flagship telescope being built to answer the biggest questions about our Universe, has received a 10% increase to its budget. The funding boost approved by the ESO Council — the organisation’s main governing body — brings the total cost of the project to €1.3 billion. The 39-metre telescope, being erected in Cerro Armazones near ESO’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile, will start operating later this decade. “Council’s decision means ESO has the funds to build an ambitious and extremely powerful science machine, fully integrated with ESO’s Paranal Observatory, that meets the longer-term aspirations of the astronomy community,” says ESO Director General Xavier Barcons. Overall, 80% of the ELT’s budget is being invested in contracts with industry in ESO member states and in Chile. The funding boost will strengthen the scientific capabilities of the under-construction telescope, bringing them in line with those envisioned in ...

3 décembre 2020: To strengthen its cooperation with Chile, ESO provides and manages an annual fund that awards projects dedicated to the development of science research, technology and education in astronomy. The Joint Committee ESO–Chile 2020 has now selected 15 projects fitting these criteria, awarding a total of 460 million Chilean pesos (about €500 000). The funds will support postdoctoral programmes in astronomy at Chilean academic institutions, scientific visits for researchers, academic faculty positions, the construction of technological systems for astronomy, as well as educational programmes for the teaching and dissemination of astronomy. Created in 1996, the Joint Committee ESO–Chile brings together representatives of ESO and the Chilean Government, through the Energy, Science and Technology & Innovation Division (DECYTI) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREL), and with the participation of the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development (ANID), and the Chilean Astronomical Society (SOCHIAS). The Joint Committee ESO–Chile has made a ...

24 novembre 2020: M1, the main mirror of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), is moving closer to completion with the approval of the final design for its edge sensors, with its positions actuators also nearing this key milestone. The sensors and actuators are crucial to the optical quality and functionality of the giant 39-metre mirror. The ELT is planned to start operating later this decade in the Chilean Atacama Desert. The primary mirror on the ELT, M1, is composed of 798 hexagonal segments, made of a thin glass-ceramic material. To ensure the optical quality of the mirror, its segments have to work together to maintain the mirror’s shape, despite changes in the telescope's position and in external conditions, such as temperature, pressure and wind. Movable supports and sensors for the mirror, namely the M1 position actuators and edge sensors, allow each mirror segment to move independently and with nanometric (1 millionth of a ...

19 novembre 2020: While the construction of ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in Chile's Atacama Desert is on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, important progress on the project is being made elsewhere. In the past few months, design activities for the telescope’s dome have been completed (in a process called final design review) and manufacturing of the dome components is currently ongoing. The extensive design review solved several complex problems inherent to building a top-performing science machine, with strict scientific requirements, in the extreme environment of the Atacama Desert. Engineers also had to ensure the operational requirements were met: high reliability, low maintenance, and resistance to earthquake and strong winds, for example. The latest renderings show what the dome will look like, and how subtle but important changes were made from the older designs. The ELT dome and telescope structure contract was placed with the Italian consortium ACe (Cimolai, Astaldi). It covers ...

17 novembre 2020: A newly and better processed version of data on planet Venus, collected with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, has now been made publicly available via the ALMA science archive. The observations of our sister planet with ALMA, in which ESO is a partner, were done in 2019 at the request of a team of astronomers led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in the UK. The team used the ALMA data to confirm whether the rare molecule phosphine was present in the clouds of Venus, after spotting signs of this element in observations from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), operated by the East Asian Observatory in Hawaiʻi. The finding drew international attention due to phosphine’s significance as a possible biomarker. It also generated healthy scientific discussion, with teams around the world scrutinising the study and its associated data. As a result of the scrutiny, ALMA staff ...

6 novembre 2020: A major component of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), its first prefocal station or PFS-A, is now close to completing its final design review. With this milestone nearly reached, ESO has signed a contract with Spanish company IDOM for a second prefocal station, PFS-B. The two ELT prefocal stations, which are designed and manufactured by IDOM, are large structures measuring over 9 metres tall and each standing on supporting platforms, located on opposite sides of the telescope main structure. Working at the interface between the telescope’s five-mirror system and its instruments, they have a triple function: control the telescope mirror alignment (including the precise pointing on-sky of the telescope structure), ensure the segmented main mirror continues to act as one, and distribute light to the telescope instruments. Sensing starlight to check alignment The ELT is extremely sensitive to very small changes in environmental conditions, which will shift the mirrors out ...

14 octobre 2020: The latest edition of ESO's quarterly journal, The Messenger, is now available online. Find out the latest news from ESO on topics ranging from new instruments to the latest science discoveries. This edition includes: Leibundgut, B. et al.: ESPRESSO Science Verification Lundgren, A. et al.: An Era Comes to an End: The Legacy of LABOCA at APEX Evans, C. et al.: The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey Bayliss, D. et al.: NGTS — Uncovering New Worlds with Ultra-Precise Photometry Download The Messenger in PDF format or visit The Messenger website to subscribe and receive a free printed copy. This product is also available in the ESOshop. The printed issue will be available at the sites when the situation allows its distribution.

14 octobre 2020: How do astronomers explore the Universe beyond the human senses? A new show from Evans & Sutherland, made in association with ESO and the Houston Museum of Natural Science offers an insight into the greatest revolution in astronomy since the invention of the telescope. Unseen Universe invites you to step into the wondrous new age of exploration and understanding. For millions of years, our view of the heavens was limited by our eyes, allowing us to see only a narrow band of electromagnetic radiation we call visible light. Now, we have the technology that allows us to look at the sky with superhuman sight and accuracy. The planetarium show Unseen Universe presents an exciting look at cutting-edge astronomy. Learn more about the supercomputers that link clusters of telescopes, continents apart. Follow the fleet of spaceborne observatories that extend our senses across space and time. Find out how the new detectors ...