Mededelingen 2020

5 juni 2020: METIS, de krachtige camera en spectrograaf die bedoeld is voor ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), is geslaagd voor zijn Preliminary Design Review in het ESO-hoofdkwartier in Garching, Duitsland. METIS, de afkorting van Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph, zal de reusachtige hoofdspiegel van de telescoop volledig benutten om een breed scala van wetenschappelijke onderwerpen te onderzoeken – van objecten in ons zonnestelsel tot verre actieve sterrenstelsels. METIS is uitermate geschikt om de levensloop van sterren te onderzoeken, van babysterren en hun planeetvormende schijven tot oudere sterren die het einde van hun bestaan naderen. De ELT zal op het moment dat hij halverwege dit decennium bedrijfsklaar is, de grootste optische tot mid-infrarood-telescoop op aarde zijn. Met zijn 39 meter grote hoofdspiegel en geavanceerde adaptieve optische systeem zal hij een zes keer hogere resolutie hebben dan de James Webb Space Telescope. Dankzij deze buitengewone telescoop en zijn adaptieve optiek zal METIS de ...

27 mei 2020: ESO’s suite of telescopes are working to uncover some of the biggest and most fundamental mysteries of our Universe today, advancing our understanding of the cosmos, even as about 95% of the Universe remains hidden from direct observation. The further we reach out and the more we discover with our telescopes and technology, the greater our assessment of the Universe and its governing rules. But there are still many things we do not understand about the cosmos. Comparing our new observations with past theories has uncovered strange and surreal paradoxes about the very nature of reality, from what is the Universe made of, is our Universe just one of many, to what, in fact, is time? In this ESOcast, we explore ten of the most fascinating paradoxes about our Universe and the further questions they inspire in our quest for understanding. You can subscribe to the ESOcasts on iTunes or ...

11 mei 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. Highlights of this edition include: 2018 Visiting Committee Report: H.-W. Rix SPHERE Unveils the True Face of the Largest Main Belt Asteroids: P. Vernazza et al. The ASPECS Survey: M. Aravena et al. 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. Confirm your ESO Messenger subscription to the print edition by 10 September. Please hold on to your envelope when it arrives — further details are on the back page of The Messenger.

24 april 2020: Het contract is getekend voor de productie van de laatste set ontvangers die op de Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) moet worden geïnstalleerd. ALMA, waar ESO partner in is, neemt het heelal waar op een reeks radiogolflengten in de millimeter- en submillimetergebieden van het elektromagnetische spectrum. Alle 66 antennes van ALMA zijn uitgerust met een aantal zeer gevoelige radio-ontvangers, die elk gevoelig zijn voor een bepaald golflengtebereik. Met de nieuwe ontvangers, Band 2-ontvangercartridges genoemd, kan ALMA golflengten in het bereik van 2,6 tot 4,5 mm detecteren. Na succesvolle tests van een prototype Band 2-ontvangercartridge heeft de ALMA-raad goedkeuring gegeven aan de pre-productiefase. Het gaat om een ​​reeks van zes cartridges, met als doel om uiteindelijk over te gaan tot de productie van de volledige set, één voor elk van de ALMA-antennes. Dit hangt af van de verificatie van de prestaties en de geschiktheid voor serieproductie op basis van de pre-productie ...

9 april 2020: Science observations at ESO’s sites in Chile may have paused last month, but data collected by our telescopes in the past continues to further astronomy years after the observations are conducted. A recently released report by the ESO Library shows that, in 2019 alone, over 1000 publications were published using data from ESO telescopes. The largest contribution to this total comes from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the VLT Interferometer at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. In 2019, a total of 597 scientific studies were published using data from the facilities. The most productive instruments were UVES, MUSE, and X-shooter with each instrument contributing to over 100 papers individually. A few key results to have come out of ESO’s flagship facility, the VLT, in 2019 included: Finding the first gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star remnant and the first detection of a heavy element born in the aftermath ...

31 maart 2020: De aanvragen voor het door ESO ondersteunde zomerkamp AstroCamp 2020 gaan op 1 april 2020 van start. AstroCamp is een academisch programma op het gebied van astronomie en fysica, georganiseerd door het Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto (CAUP), dat nieuwsgierigheid en kritisch denken wil bevorderen. Het kamp vindt plaats van 9 tot 23 augustus 2020 op een afgelegen en rustige plek, weg van de stedelijke stress. Het programma is bedoeld voor middelbare scholieren uit 42 verschillende landen, waaronder alle ESO-lidstaten (dus ook Nederland en België), Canada en de Verenigde Staten. De scholieren moeten in een van hun laatste drie jaren zijn voordat ze naar de universiteit gaan. De aankondiging van het AstroCamp was op 22 Februari. De video van deze presentatie is hier beschikbaar. Studenten van alle achtergronden komen samen en volgen twee cursussen, bestaande uit dagelijkse lessen, opdrachten en een eindexamen. Enkele andere hoogtepunten zijn: Het ...

9 maart 2020: Final update (23 May 2022): From 28 May, ESO will reopen public visits to its observatory sites in Chile, following two years of pandemic-related closures. For more information, please check our dedicated announcement. Update (9 May 2022): At its headquarters in Garching, ESO started a new phase of its ramp-up plan this week, with staff now generally working full-time on site. Some COVID-19 health and safety measures remain. Visitors can now come to HQ, subject to receiving an invitation and completing a health declaration form, including acknowledgement of the applicable COVID-19 safety rules. The ESO Supernova Planetarium and Visitor Centre is operating with its normal opening hours and is offering planetarium shows and tours in the exhibition, subject to COVID-19 health and safety measures. Update (30 March 2022): Two years after operations at ESO’s observatories in Chile were scaled back due to the pandemic, the organisation has now moved the ...

19 februari 2020: M1, the primary mirror of ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), is the centrepiece of the revolutionary astronomy machine currently under construction in Chile's Atacama Desert. Too large to be made from a single piece of glass, the 39-metre-diameter mirror will consist of 798 hexagonal segments, each about 5 centimetres thick and measuring 1.4 metres across. Producing 798 segments (plus a few additional pieces) that can work together as a single giant mirror to deliver unprecedented astronomical data is an engineering challenge with milestones worth celebrating. M1 segments begin their life at SCHOTT in Germany as blanks made of Zerodur©, a glass-ceramic material that has very low thermal expansion. After the casting and machining of the blanks to their approximate shape at SCHOTT, the segments are delivered to Safran Reosc, in France. The first 24 segments are currently at Safran Reosc ready to be polished. Polishing facility inaugurated in Poitiers To ...

11 februari 2020: Today, the International Day for Women and Girls in Science, we highlight some of the steps ESO has taken towards diversity and inclusion, and how the organisation is celebrating this special day. On 30 January 2020, ESO and UN Women signed a Memorandum of Understanding at ESO’s Vitacura Office in Santiago, Chile, under which ESO stresses its commitment to advancing gender equality, diversity and inclusion. ESO and UN Women Chile will combine forces to promote science and engineering careers among young girls in Chile, as well as to create training opportunities for disadvantaged women who have struggled to finish their formal education. In addition, ESO will use the Women Empowerment Principles as guideposts to structure and measure the progress of its diversity and inclusion actions. The agreement was signed by María Noel Vaeza, UN Women Regional Director for the Americas and the Caribbean, and Xavier Barcons, ESO Director General, in ...

6 februari 2020: * * * This event has been cancelled. Please read this announcement for further information. * * * On 26 March 2020, ESO will participate in Germany’s Girls’ Day activities, in which technology companies, universities and research organisations open their doors to female school students to give them an insight into scientific and technological professions — encouraging more of them to choose careers in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Places for the event are limited. To register, please visit the Girls’ Day website. The ESO Girls’ Day will introduce the work of ESO and highlight many of our daily activities, such as astrophysical research, mechanical and optomechanical design and integration, operations, and much more. The programme includes introductory talks as well as hands-on workshops on astronomy and engineering. The students will learn how astronomical instruments are built, tested and operated. They will also learn how data are collected ...

4 februari 2020: The latest issue of the free magazine Science in School is now available online and in printed form. This European journal for science teachers offers up-to-date information on cutting-edge science, teaching materials, science education projects, interviews with inspiring scientists and teachers, reviews of books, and many other useful resources for science teachers. It aims to promote science teaching by encouraging communication between teachers, scientists and others involved in European science education. Highlights of this issue include: an article summarising the methods planet hunters use to search for planets beyond the Solar System; an exploration of several theories of how life has emerged; and a presentation of the World’s fastest camera for soft X-rays in the News from EIROs section. Teaching activities include: an exciting experiment, not just for hobby detectives, in which latent fingerprints are made visible; an activity to grow plants as they would in outer space or on ...

4 februari 2020: The Big Science Business Forum 2020 (BSBF2020) is the second such event, intended as a one-stop-shop where European businesses and other stakeholders can learn about future investments and procurements on the part of Europe’s Big Science organisations. The event is organised by an International Organising Committee consisting of 10 Big Science organisations, ESO being one of them. The event will be hosted by the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and CIEMAT - Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas. It takes place from 6 to 9 October 2020 in Granada, Spain. Update 8 October 2020: Given the current situation, the BSBF2020 International Organising Committee (IOC) has decided to postpone the BSBF2020 event to 28 September - 1 October 2021. In the meantime, several webinars are being organised. Big Science is a term that encapsulates the way in which scientific progress increasingly ...

3 februari 2020: The French company CILAS has won a multi-million Euro contract with an international organisation thanks in part to technology developed jointly with ESO. “This is a very nice example where ESO invested in technology research and development with a European company and strengthened its capabilities,” says Stefan Ströbele, an expert on deformable mirrors at ESO who worked with CILAS. CILAS, one of ESO's industrial partners and a pioneer in adaptive optics, built deformable mirrors for a number of instruments on ESO telescopes. Many instruments on modern telescopes rely on in-built adaptive optics systems to correct for the effects of atmospheric turbulence. Deformable mirrors are key components of these systems; by means of actuators, their surface can be deformed ever so slightly to compensate for the atmospheric distortion that makes the images fuzzy. To support research and technological development in Europe, and to ensure the availability of necessary technology for ESO ...

31 januari 2020: ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the world’s biggest eye on the sky, will have a pioneering five-mirror optical system that will allow it to unveil the Universe in unprecedented detail. The tertiary mirror in this system, M3, has completed a key production stage and has now been delivered to French company Safran Reosc for final polishing. Each of the mirrors on the ELT presents a significant technological challenge, with extreme precision required at each production stage to ensure flawless optical quality. The German company SCHOTT produced the mirror blank for M3 — a cast block of a glass-ceramic material known as ZerodurⓇ measuring more than four metres from edge to edge and weighing in at over three tonnes. After casting and machining the M3 blank to its approximate shape, SCHOTT delivered the mirror to Safran Reosc, who will now grind and polish it to a precision of 15 nanometres across ...

21 januari 2020: MICADO, het eerste speciaal voor ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) ontwikkelde camerasysteem, heeft een belangrijke mijlpaal bereikt. Het MICADO-consortium is, samen met een groep van externe deskundigen van over de hele wereld, een week lang bijeengekomen in het ESO-hoofdkwartier in Garching (Duitsland) om de optiek, mechanica, software en elektronica van het instrument, en het bijbehorende budgetplan onder de loep te nemen, om zo te kunnen vaststellen welke terreinen meer aandacht verdienden. Na de bijeenkomst handelde het MICADO-team alle belangrijke vragen af die tijdens de review aan de orde kwamen, en nu is het instrument formeel geslaagd voor zijn voorbereidende ontwerpevaluatie. Een gedetailleerdere ontwerpfase, die moet leiden tot de uiteindelijke ontwerpevaluatie en de bouw van de vele componenten van het instrument, is in gang gezet. MICADO – de Multi-Adaptive Optics Imaging Camera for Deep Observations – is uitgerust voor het maken van opnamen, met name in het nabij-infrarood, en voor nauwkeurige ...

9 januari 2020: The Royal Observatory Greenwich, in association with Insight Investment and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, has announced the key dates for the Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2020 competition — its annual global search for the most beautiful and spectacular visions of the cosmos, whether they are striking pictures of vast galaxies millions of light-years away, or dramatic images of the night sky much closer to home. ESO will support the 2020 competition by providing a judge from its Department of Communication. Now in its twelfth year, the hugely popular competition opens to entrants on 13 January 2020, giving them the chance of taking home the grand prize of £10 000. Entrants will have until Friday 6 March 2020 to enter up to ten images in the various categories of the competition via www.rmg.co.uk/astrocomp. Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2020 has nine main categories: Aurorae: Photographs ...