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24 February 1992: This photo shows the newly discovered minor planet 1992 AD which is the most distant in the solar system. It was obtained at the ESO La Silla Observatory on 5 February 1992. The telescope followed the planet whose 16.7 magnitude image is round; the stars in the field are seen as short trails. The diffuse trail at the upper right corner is that of a galaxy

22 February 1991: It was early in the morning of Tuesday, February 12, and ESO astronomers Olivier Hainaut and Alain Smette [1] did not know what to believe. Observing with the Danish 1.54-metre telescope at the La Silla observatory, they had just finished a one-hour exposure of a small sky field in the constellation of Hydra (the Water Snake). This work was part of the ESO monitoring programme of famous Comet Halley and the astronomers felt that something was quite wrong.

26 July 1990: Famous Comet Halley, now receding from the Sun after its perihelion passage in early 1986, has recently entered into a state of hibernation which will last until shortly before the next passage in 2062.

6 July 1989: Recent studies at the European Southern Observatory indicate that the formation of a new star is a dramatic process which may be more complex than most astronomers believed only a few years ago.

8 December 1988: Reinhold Häfner, visiting astronomer at the ESO La Silla Observatory, got his life's surprise when the star on the screen in front of him suddenly was gone. All the other stars were still visible, but this particular one had simply vanished.

9 September 1988: The most distant, individual star ever recorded was detected with a telescope at the ESO La Silla observatory on August 9, 1988. The object is an exploding star, a supernova, and is situated in an inconspicuous galaxy, itself a member of a distant cluster of galaxies. Additional observations indicate that the cluster, known as AC118, is at a distance of about 5 billion light-years (1 billion = 1000 million). Thus this supernova explosion occurred 5 billion years ago, or about the time when the Sun and the planets were born. Ever since then, the light emitted by this event has been travelling towards us, only arriving here now. It is the most distant supernova (ESO8802) observed so far.

8 July 1988: A unique picture of Comet Halley has just been obtained by three astronomers with a telescope at the ESO La Silla observatory. An exposure time of almost 12 hours was necessary to show the structure of the famous comet in some detail at the present, very large distance of 1250 million kilometres.

16 March 1988: New and exciting observations at the European Southern Observatory have probed the interstellar space around last year's bright supernova SN 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)

3 March 1987: One week after the explosion of a bright supernova (1987A) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (ESO 04/87), and after intensive observations at the European Southern Observatory and elsewhere in the southern hemisphere, it is now possible to draw several important conclusions about this unique event.

26 February 1987: Stars do not live forever - they are born and they die. All stars are born by contraction of matter in large interstellar clouds of gas and dust, but they do not all die in the same way. Heavy stars appear to end their active lives in gigantic supernova explosions (eso8608) while less massive stars (like our Sun) follow another path.

13 May 1986: Detailed observations of a bright supernova in the peculiar galaxy NGC 5128 = Centaurus A, have led astronomers at the European Southern Observatory to believe that this galaxy is much closer to us than previously thought. It is the nearest, strongly radio-emitting galaxy and is as such an object of crucial importance in modern astrophysical research. The revised distance is 7 - 10 million light years or only 3 - 4 times farther away than the Andromeda Nebula. Cen A may therefore even be an outlying member of the Local Group. The total radio emission energy corresponds to the conversion to pure energy (annihilation) of a mass equal to 10.000 suns.

6 March 1986: This spectacular image of Comet Halley, rising above the eastern horizon, was obtained at the La Silla observatory during the morning of February 22. It was made by superposing 6 exposures (total 9 min.) with the wide-field CCD camera which was specially designed for the study of Comet Halley. The image measures 5.5 x 9 degrees across and covers the 500 - 1100 nm spectral region (green near infrared). Each pixel (image element) measures 31 x 31 arc-seconds.