ESO

European
Southern
Observatory

Reaching New
Heights in Astronomy
ESO and Astronomy
Astronomy is often described as the
oldest of the sciences. The majestic
Milky Way, stretching across the sky on
a clear dark night, must have been an
awe-inspiring sight for people from ages
and cultures past, just as it is for us.
Today, astronomy stands out as one of
the most dynamic sciences, using
some of the most advanced technolo-
gies and sophisticated techniques avail-
able to scientists. These technologies
allow us to study objects at the far
edge of the observable Universe and
to detect p ­ lanets around other stars.
We can begin to answer a fundamental
question that fascinates every one of us:
Is there life elsewhere in the Universe?
ESO’s Paranal
­O bservatory, home
to the Very Large
­Telescope.
2
ESO is the foremost intergovernmental
astronomy organisation in the world.
It carries out an ambitious programme
focused on the design, construction
and operation of powerful ground-based
observing facilities. The year 2012
marked the 50th anniversary of the sign-
ing of the ESO Convention that created
the organisation, while 2013 was the 50th
anniversary of ESO’s long and fruitful
col­laboration with the host state of Chile.
The La Silla Paranal Observatory is
op­erated by ESO at two sites in the
­Atacama Desert region of Chile. La Silla
is home to several telescopes with ­mirror
diameters of up to 3.6 metres. The flag-
ship facility is the Very Large Telescope
(VLT) on Cerro Paranal, whose design,
instrument complement and operating
principles set the standard for ground-
based optical and infrared astronomy.
The Very Large Tele­scope Interferometer
(VLTI) enhances the capabilities of this
unique facility even further, as do the
VST (optical) and VISTA (near-infrared)
survey telescopes.
Each year, about 1700 proposals are
submitted for the use of ESO tele­
scopes, requesting between three and
five times more nights than are avail­
able. This demand is part of the reason
why ESO is the most productive ground-
based observatory in the world, with
more than two peer-reviewed papers
based on ESO data being published
every day (871 papers in 2012 alone).
ESO is also the focal point for Europe’s
participation in the Atacama Large Milli­
meter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an
intercontinental collaboration with North
America, East Asia and the Republic of
Chile. The ALMA partners operate this
unique facility at the high-altitude site
of Chajnantor in the Chilean Altiplano.
ALMA was inaugurated by the President
of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, in 2013,
but Early Science observations with a
partial array began in 2011.
The next step in ESO’s mission as the
global driving force behind ground-
based astronomy is to build the
European Extremely Large Telescope
(E-ELT) with a segmented primary
mirror 39 metres in diameter. The E-ELT
programme was approved in 2012
and operations are expected to begin
around 2024. The E-ELT will be the
world’s biggest eye on the sky — the
largest optical/near-infrared telescope
in existence.
Tim de Zeeuw
ESO Director General
ESO/J. Girard
3
The ESO Sites

The northern part of Chile, which is
partly covered by the Atacama Desert,
has exceptionally clear and dark skies
that offer stunning views of the impor-
tant centre of the Milky Way and the two
Magellanic Clouds.
ESO’s first observatory was built at
La Silla, 2400 metres above sea level
and 600 kilometres north of Santiago
in Chile. It is equipped with several opti-
cal telescopes with mirror diameters
of up to 3.6 metres. The ESO 3.6-metre
telescope is now home to the world’s
foremost exoplanet hunter, HARPS
(High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet
Searcher).
At 2600 metres above sea level, the
Paranal site, in one of the driest areas
on Earth, is home to the Very Large
Tele­scope array and is situated about
130 kilometres south of Antofagasta
in Chile, 12 kilometres inland from the
Pacific coast. The VLT is not just one
telescope, but an array of four Unit
Tele­scopes, each with a main mirror of
8.2 metres in diameter. The VLT also
includes four movable Auxiliary Tele­
scopes, 1.8 metres in diameter, which
form part of the VLT I­nterferometer.
Paranal is also the home of two power-
ful survey telescopes: the VST and
VISTA.
The future 39-metre European
Extremely Large Telescope will be built
on Cerro Armazones, just 20 kilometres
from the Paranal Observatory, and will
be integrated in the Paranal operational
system.
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submilli­
meter Array — with 66 giant 12-metre
and 7-metre diameter antennas — is a
partnership with North America, East
Asia and the Republic of Chile. It is at
the highest of all ESO’s sites, located
on the Chajnantor Plateau, 5000 metres
above sea level, and one of the highest
astronomical observatory sites in the
world. The Chajnantor site is also home
to the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment
(APEX), a 12-metre millimetre- and
submillimetre-wave telescope.
ESO’s Headquarters are located in
Garching, near Munich, Germany.
This is the scientific, technical and
admin­istrative centre of ESO. ESO also
maintains an office in Santiago, in Chile.
ESO’s Headquarters,
near Munich, Germany.

SAN PEDRO
DE ATACAMA

ANTOFAGASTA

Cerro
La Peineta
This map shows where
ESO has stationed its
observatories in Chile.

Cerro Las
Campanas

Cerro
Garching, Germany
Cinchado

LA SERENA

Chile
Cerro Tololo

Cerro Pachón

Cerro
Guatulame

4
 ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)
The La Silla
­O bservatory.

Clem & Adri Bacri-Normier (wingsforscience.com)/ESO

The Atacama Large
Millimeter/submilli­
meter Array on the
Chajnantor Plateau.

J. L. Dauvergne & G. Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)/ESO

Aerial view of Paranal
Observatory. On the
left is the Very Large
Telescope atop Cerro
­Paranal and on the right
is the infrared survey
telescope VISTA.

The European
Extremely Large
­Telescope on Cerro
Armazones (artist’s
impression).

5
ESO Science Highlights
ESO’s Top 10 Astronomical Discoveries:
1 Stars orbiting the Milky Way’s
­supermassive black hole
Several of ESO’s flagship telescopes were
used to capture the movement of stars
around the monster at the heart of our
galaxy in more detail than ever before, over
a period of almost twenty years.
2 The accelerating Universe
Two independent research teams
using observations of exploding stars,
including data from ESO’s telescopes at
La Silla and Paranal, have shown that the
expansion of the Universe is accelerating.
The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was
awarded for this result.
3 First image of an exoplanet
The VLT has obtained the first-ever image
of a planet outside the Solar System. The
planet has five times the mass of Jupiter
and orbits a failed star — a brown dwarf
— at a distance that is 55 times the mean
Earth–Sun distance.
4 Gamma-ray bursts — the connections
with supernovae and merging neutron
stars
ESO telescopes have solved a long-
standing cosmic puzzle by providing defini-
tive proof that long-duration gamma-ray
bursts are linked with the final explosions
of massive stars. A t­elescope at La Silla
was also able to observe the visible light
from a short-duration gamma-ray burst for
the first time, showing that they most likely
­originate from the violent collision of two
merging neutron stars.
5 Measuring the cosmic temperature
The VLT has detected carbon monoxide
molecules in a galaxy seen as it was almost
11 billion years ago. This has allowed
astronomers to obtain a precise measure-
ment of the cosmic temperature, a first for
such a remote epoch.
6 Oldest star known in the Milky Way
Using ESO’s VLT, astronomers have
measured the age of the oldest star known
in our galaxy. At 13.2 billion years old, the
star was born in the earliest era of star
formation in the Universe. Uranium has also
been detected in a Milky Way star and
used as an independent estimate of the
age of the galaxy.
6
7 Flares from the Milky Way’s supermas-
sive black hole
The VLT and APEX teamed up to study
violent flares near the supermassive black
hole at the centre of the Milky Way, reveal-
ing material being stretched out as it orbits
in the intense gravitational field close to the
central black hole. In addition, exquisite
VLT observations re­­vealed powerful infra-
red flares coming from the surroundings of
the black hole, strongly suggesting that it
rotates very rapidly.
8 Direct measurements of exoplanet
atmospheres
The atmosphere around a super-Earth
exoplanet has been analysed for the first
time using the VLT. The planet, which is
known as GJ 1214b, was studied as it
passed in front of its parent star and some
of the starlight passed through the planet’s
atmosphere.
9 Richest planetary system
Astronomers using the HARPS planet
hunter have discovered a planetary system
containing at least five planets, orbiting the
Sun-like star HD 10180. Two other planets
may also be present, one of which may
have the lowest mass ever found. Further-
more, the team has found evidence that
the distances of the planets from their
star f­ollow a regular pattern, as also seen in
the Solar System.
10 Milky Way stellar motions
After more than 1000 nights of obser­
vations at La Silla spread over a period of
15 years, astronomers have determined the
motions of more than 14 000 Sun-like stars
residing in the neighbourhood of the Sun,
showing that our home galaxy has led a
much more turbulent and chaotic life than
previously assumed.
1 2 3

4 6 7

8 9 10

7
The Centaurus A ­g alaxy
(NGC 5128). This image
was taken with the Wide
Field Imager attached to
the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre
telescope at the La Silla
Observatory in Chile.

8
 ESO. Acknowledgements: VPHAS+ Consortium/Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit
The spectacular star-
forming Carina Nebula
has been captured in
great detail by the VLT
Survey Telescope at
ESO’s Paranal Observa-
tory. This picture was
taken with the help
of Sebastián Piñera,
­President of Chile.

A spectacular view
of the stellar nursery
IC 2944 was released to
celebrate a milestone:
15 years of ESO’s Very
Large Telescope.

9
The Very Large Telescope
The Very Large Telescope array is the
optical flagship facility for European
astronomy at the beginning of the
third millennium. It is the world’s most
advanced optical instrument, consisting
of four Unit Telescopes with record-
breaking main mirrors 8.2 metres in
diameter and four movable 1.8-metre
Auxiliary Telescopes that can combine
to form an interferometer.
The 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes can also
be used individually. These telescopes
are so powerful that one of them can
obtain images of celestial objects four
billion times fainter than can be seen
with the unaided eye.
The Very Large
­Telescope at sunset.
10
The VLT instrumentation programme is The first of the Unit Telescopes began
the most ambitious ever conceived for a routine scientific operations on 1 April
single observatory. It includes imagers, 1999. The VLT has already made an
cameras and spectrographs that cover immense impact on observational
a broad spectral region, spanning ultra- astronomy. It is the most productive
violet (0.3 µm) to mid-infrared (20 µm) individual ground-based facility in
wavelengths. the world, and VLT results lead to, on
­average, the publication of more than
The 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes one peer-reviewed scientific paper
are housed in compact, thermally every day.
controlled buildings, which rotate
synchronously with the telescopes. This
significantly minimises local effects on
the observing conditions, such as air
turbulence in the telescope tube, which
might result from variations in tempera-
ture and wind flow.
 UT3 (Melipal) UT4 (Yepun)
SPHERE AOF (2016)
VISIR (2015) HAWK-I
VIMOS SINFONI
MUSE LGS

UT2 (Kueyen)
FLAMES VST VISTA
X-SHOOTER VIRCAM
OmegaCAM
UVES

UT1 (Antu)
NACO
CRIRES (2016)
FORS2 VLT
KMOS Incoherent
combined focus:
ESPRESSO (2016)

VLTI
MIDI
AMBER
Visitor instrument
GRAVITY (2016)
MATISSE (2016)

Instruments on the Very

Large Telescope.

ESO/G.Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)

11
Adaptive Optics
Turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere
distorts images obtained at even the best
observing sites in the world, including
ESO’s in Chile. This turbulence causes
the stars to twinkle in a way that delights
poets but frustrates astronomers, since it
blurs the finest details of the cosmos. By
observing directly from space astrono-
mers can avoid this atmospheric blurring
effect, but the high costs of building and
operating space telescopes compared
to using ground-based facilities limits the
size and scope of the telescopes we can
place off-Earth.
Astronomers have turned to a method
called adaptive optics to solve this prob-
lem. Sophisticated deformable mirrors
controlled by computers can correct in
real time for the distortion caused by the
turbulence of the Earth’s atmosphere,
making the images obtained almost as
sharp as those taken from space. Adap-
tive optics allows the corrected optical
Secondary mirror
Primary mirror
Deformable mirror
Computer
12
system to observe finer details of much
fainter astronomical objects than would
otherwise be possible from the ground.
Adaptive optics requires a fairly bright ref-
erence star that appears very close to the
object under study. This reference star
is used to measure the blurring caused by
the atmosphere so that the deformable
mirror can correct for it. Since suitable
stars are not available everywhere in the
night sky, astronomers can create artificial
reference stars by shining a powerful laser
beam 90 kilometres up into the Earth’s
upper atmosphere. Thanks to these laser
guide stars, almost the entire sky can
now be observed with adaptive optics.
ESO has led the way in developing adap-
tive optics and laser guide star technolo-
gies and has collaborated with several
European institutes and industries. ESO’s
adaptive optics facilities have obtained
many remarkable scientific results. These
Atmospheric turbulence
Light rays
include the first direct observations of
an exoplanet (see p. 6), as well as the
detailed study of the environment around
the black hole at the centre of the Milky
Way (see p. 6).
The next generation of adaptive optics
will be installed on both the VLT and the
European Extremely Large Telescope.
This will include the use of several
laser guide stars on the VLT, as well as
advanced adaptive optics instruments
such as planet finders. Even more
advanced systems, tailored to meet
the challenges of the E-ELT, are under
active development. Recently, significant
progress has paved the way for attaining
a wider corrected field of view, a result
that will have an impact on the design
of future VLT and E-ELT adaptive optics
systems.
This illustration shows
how adaptive optics
works.
Astronomical camera
Turbulence measure
 PARLA laser at the
VLT. The laser is
used to generate an
artificial star about
90 kilo­metres up in
the atmosphere.
ESO/G.Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)

13
The VLT Interferometer

Individual telescopes of the VLT can be
combined to form the giant VLT Inter-
ferometer, allowing astronomers to see
details up to 16 times finer than with
the individual telescopes, and to study
celestial objects in unprecedented
detail. With the VLTI, it is possible to
see details on the surfaces of stars and
even to study the environment close
to a black hole at the centre of another
galaxy.
Light beams from the telescopes are
combined in the VLTI using a complex
system of mirrors in underground
­tunnels, where the light path lengths
must be kept equal to distances of less
than one thousandth of a millimetre
over more than 100 metres. With this
130-metre large “virtual telescope”
the VLTI can perform measurements
equivalent to picking out the head of
a screw on the International Space
­Station, 400 kilo­metres above us in
orbit, from the ground.

One of the four

1.8-metre Auxiliary
­Telescopes, part of the
Very Large Telescope
Interferometer.

Panoramic view of the

Very Large Telescope
Interferometer tunnel.

14
The VLTI Auxiliary Telescopes

Although the 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes The ATs are very unusual telescopes —
can be combined in the VLTI, most of self-sufficient in their ultra-compact
the time these large telescopes are protective domes, they carry their own
used individually for other purposes and electronics, ventilation, hydraulics and
so are only available for interferometric cooling systems, and include their own
observations for a limited number of transporters, which lift the telescopes
nights every year. and move them from one position to
another.
In order to exploit the power of the VLTI
every night four smaller Auxiliary Tele­
scopes (ATs) are available. The ATs are
mounted on tracks and can be moved
between precisely defined observing
positions. From these positions, light
beams are reflected from the AT mirrors

ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)

and combined in the VLTI.

15
Survey Telescopes
Two powerful telescopes — the ­V isible
and Infrared Survey Telescope for
Astronomy (VISTA) and the VLT Survey
Telescope (VST) — are sited at ESO’s
Paranal Observatory. They are the most
powerful dedicated imaging survey
telescopes in the world and are hugely
increasing the scientific discovery poten-
tial of the Paranal Observatory.
Many of the most interesting astro-
nomical objects — from dim brown
dwarf stars in the Milky Way, to the most
remote quasars — are rare. Finding them
is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
The largest telescopes, such as ESO’s
Very Large Telescope and the NASA/ESA
Hubble Space Telescope, can only study
a minute part of the sky at any one time,
but VISTA and the VST are designed
to photograph large areas quickly and
deeply. The two telescopes are currently
performing several carefully designed
surveys and creating vast archives of
Inside VISTA’s dome.
16
both images and catalogues of objects
that will be harvested by astronomers for
decades to come.
The surveys are already producing
science directly, and in addition, interest-
ing objects discovered by the survey
telescopes will form targets for detailed
study, both by the neighbouring VLT
and by other telescopes on Earth and
in space. Both survey telescopes are
housed in domes close to the VLT and
share the same exceptional observing
conditions as well as a similar and highly
efficient operational model.
VISTA has a main mirror 4.1 metres
across and is the most powerful near-
infrared survey telescope in the world. At
the heart of VISTA is a 3-tonne camera
containing 16 detectors sensitive to
infrared light with a combined total of
67 megapixels. It has the widest coverage
of any astronomical near-infrared camera.
The VST is a state-of-the-art 2.6-metre
telescope equipped with OmegaCAM,
a monster 268-megapixel CCD camera
with a field of view more than four times
the area of the full Moon. It complements
VISTA and is surveying the visible-light
sky.
The VST is the result of a joint venture
between ESO and the Capodimonte
Astronomical Observatory (OAC) of
Naples, a research centre of the Italian
National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).
The VST: The largest
telescope in the world
designed for visible-
light sky surveys.
ESO/G. Lombardi (glphoto.it)
ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. Acknowledgements: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

This wide-field view

of the Orion Nebula
(Messier 42), lying
about 1350 light-years
from Earth, was taken
with VISTA at ESO’s
Paranal Observatory
in Chile.
ESO/INAF-VST/OmegaCAM. Acknowledgements: OmegaCen/Astro-WISE/Kapteyn Institute

The first released VST

image shows the spec-
tacular star-forming
region Messier 17, also
known as the Omega
Nebula or the Swan
Nebula.

17
ALMA
High on the Chajnantor Plateau in the
Chilean Andes, the European Southern
Observatory, together with its global
partners, is operating the Atacama
Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array,
ALMA — a state-of-the-art telescope
studying light from some of the coldest
objects in the Universe. This light has
a typical wavelength of around a mil-
limetre, lying between infrared light
and radio waves in the electromagnetic
spectrum, and is therefore known as
millimetre and submillimetre radiation.
ALMA can probe the Universe at these
wavelengths with unprecedented sen­
sitivity and resolution, with a vision up
to ten times sharper than the Hubble
Space Telescope, and complements
images made with the VLT Interfero­
meter.
Light at these wavelengths comes from
vast cold clouds in interstellar space, at
temperatures as low as –263 degrees
Celsius, and from some of the earli-
est and most distant galaxies in the
Universe. Astronomers can use this
light to study the chemical and physical
conditions in molecular clouds — the
dense regions of gas and dust where
new stars are being born. Often these
regions of the Universe are dark and
Aerial view of the
Chajnantor Plateau,
located at 5000 metres
above sea level in the
Chilean Andes, where
the array of ALMA anten-
nas is located.
18
obscured in visible light, but they shine
brightly in the millimetre and submil-
limetre parts of the spectrum.
ALMA studies the building blocks of
stars, planetary systems, galaxies and
life itself. By providing scientists with
detailed images of stars and planets
being born near the Solar System, and
detecting distant galaxies forming at
the edge of the observable Universe,
ALMA will let astronomers address
some of the deepest questions of our
cosmic origins.
Millimetre and submillimetre radiation
opens a window into the enigmatic cold
Universe, but these signals from space
are heavily absorbed by water vapour in
the Earth’s atmosphere. Telescopes for
this kind of astronomy must be built on
high, dry sites.
This is why ALMA, the largest astro-
nomical project in existence, was built
5000 metres above sea level on the
high plateau of Chajnantor. The site,
some 50 kilometres east of San Pedro
de Atacama in northern Chile, has one
of the driest atmospheres on Earth.
Astronomers find that the conditions
are unsurpassed for observing, but they
must operate a frontier observatory
under very difficult, oxygen-deprived
conditions. Chajnantor is more than
750  metres higher than the observa-
tories on Mauna Kea, and 2400 metres
higher than the VLT on Cerro ­Paranal.
The ALMA project is a partnership of
Europe, North America and East Asia in
cooperation with the Republic of Chile.
ALMA is funded in Europe by ESO,
in North America by the U.S. National
Science Foundation (NSF) in coopera-
tion with the National Research Council
of Canada (NRC) and the National
­Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and
in East Asia by the National Institutes
of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan
in cooperation with the Academia Sinica
(AS) in Taiwan. ALMA construction and
operations are led on behalf of Europe
by ESO, on behalf of North America by
the National Radio Astronomy Observ­
atory (NRAO), which is managed by
Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and
on behalf of East Asia by the National
Astronomical Observatory of Japan
(NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory
(JAO) provides the unified leadership
and management of the construction,
commissioning and operation of ALMA.
 A European ALMA
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

antenna, weighing
100 tonnes, takes a ride
on Lore, one of
the giant ALMA trans-
porters, at the Opera-
tions Support Facility in
the Chilean Andes.

Clem & Adri Bacri-Normier (wingsforscience.com)/ESO

19
 The Antennae Galaxies
are a pair of distorted
colliding spiral galax-
ies about 70 million
light-years away. This
view combines ALMA
observations, made in
two different wavelength
ranges during the
­ob­­s ervatory’s early test-
ing phase, with visible-
light observations from
the NASA/ESA Hubble
Space Tele­s cope.

ALMA has a revolutionary design,

­composed of 66 high-precision anten-
nas. A main array of fifty antennas,
ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO). Visible light image: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

12 metres in diameter, acting together

as a single telescope — an interfer-
ometer — and an additional compact
array of four 12-metre and twelve
7-metre antennas. The antennas can
be moved across the desert plateau
over distances from 150 metres to
16 kilometres, giving ALMA a powerful
variable “zoom”.

The ALMA supercomputer, the correla-

tor, performs 17 quadrillion operations
per second and is one of the fastest
special purpose computers in the world.

ALMA was inaugurated in 2013, but

early scientific observations with a
partial array began in 2011.

20
APEX

Astronomers have another comple-

mentary facility for millimetre and
submillimetre astronomy at Chajnantor:
the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment
(APEX). This is a 12-metre telescope
based on an ALMA prototype antenna,
and operating at the ALMA site. APEX
was operational for many years before
ALMA and now that the bigger array is
complete it is taking on an important
survey role.

Astronomers are using APEX to study

the conditions inside molecular clouds,
such as those around the Orion
Nebula, or the Pillars of Creation in
the Eagle Nebula. They have found
carbon monoxide gas and complex
organic molecules, as well as charged
molecules containing fluorine, which
had never been detected before. These
discoveries advance our understanding
of the ­cradles of gas where new stars
are born.

APEX is a collaboration between

ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2

the Max-Planck-Institut für
­Radioastronomie, Onsala Space
­Observatory and ESO. The telescope
is operated by ESO. It follows in
the footsteps of the Swedish–ESO
­Submillimetre Telescope (SEST), which
operated at La Silla from 1987 until
2003 in a collaboration between ESO An APEX view of star
formation in the Orion
and the Onsala Space Observatory.
Nebula.

ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org)

APEX under the Moon.

21
The E-ELT
Extremely large telescopes are consid-
ered worldwide as one of the highest
priorities in ground-based astronomy.
They will vastly advance astrophysical
knowledge, allowing detailed studies
of subjects that include planets around
other stars, the first objects in the Uni-
verse, supermassive black holes, and
the nature and distribution of the dark
matter and dark energy which dominate
the Universe.
The revolutionary European Extremely
Large Telescope (E-ELT) will have a
39-metre main mirror and will be the
largest optical/near-infrared telescope
in the world: “the world’s biggest eye on
the sky”.
22
The E-ELT will be bigger than all
currently existing optical research
telescopes combined and will gather
13 times more light than the largest
optical telescopes today. The E-ELT will
be able to correct for the atmospheric
distortions from the start, providing
images 16 times sharper than those
from the Hubble Space Telescope. It
has a novel five-mirror design and the
primary mirror is composed of 798
hexagonal segments, each 1.4 metres
across but only 5 centimetres thick.
With the start of operations planned
for around 2024, the E-ELT will tackle
the biggest scientific challenges
of our time, and aim for a number
of notable firsts, including tracking
down Earth-like planets around other
stars in the habitable zones where life
could exist — one of the Holy Grails
of ­modern observational astronomy.
It will also perform stellar a
­ rchaeology
by studying old stars and stellar
populations in nearby galaxies, as well
as make fundamental contributions to
cosmology by measuring the properties
of the first stars and galaxies, and
probing the nature of dark matter and
dark energy. On top of this astronomers
are planning for the unexpected — new
and unforeseeable questions will surely
arise from the discoveries made with
the E-ELT.
This image shows
Cerro Armazones at
night, site of the future
European Extremely
Large Telescope.

Several test segments

of the giant primary
mirror of the E-ELT are
currently undergoing
testing close to ESO’s
Headquarters in
­G arching, Germany.

Artist's impression of
the future E-ELT.

23
Three planets dance
over La Silla. Above
the round domes of the
telescopes, three of
the planets in our Solar
System — Jupiter (top),
Venus (lower left), and
Mercury (lower right)
— were revealed after
sunset, engaged in their
cosmic dance.

24
La Silla
The La Silla Observatory, 600 kilo­
metres north of Santiago in Chile and
at 2400 metres above sea level, has
been an ESO stronghold since the
1960s. Here, ESO still operates two of
the best 4-metre-class telescopes in
the world, enabling La Silla to maintain
its position as one of the most scientifi-
cally productive observatories in the
world.
The 3.58-metre New Technology
Telescope (NTT) broke new ground for
telescope engineering and design. It
was the first telescope in the world to
have a computer-controlled main mirror
(active optics), a technology developed
at ESO and now applied to the VLT
and most of the world’s current large
telescopes.
Elsewhere at La Silla, the ESO 3.6-
metre telescope has been in operation
since 1977. Following major upgrades,
it remains in the frontline among the
4-metre-class telescopes in the south-
ern hemisphere. It is home to the world’s
foremost exoplanet hunter: HARPS, a
spectrograph with unrivalled precision.
The infrastructure of La Silla is also
used by many of the ESO Member
States for targeted projects such as
the Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler
telescope, the Rapid Eye Mount (REM)
and TAROT (Télescope à Action Rapide
pour les Objets Transitoires — Rapid
Action Telescope for Transient Objects)
gamma-ray burst chasers, as well as
more general-purpose telescopes such
as the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre and the
Danish 1.54-metre telescopes. The
67-million pixel Wide Field Imager on
the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope
has taken many spectacular images of
celestial objects, some of which have
now become icons in their own right.
ESO/Y. Beletsky
25
From Ideas to Published Papers:
The Data Flow
The operation of ESO telescopes forms
a seamless process that starts when
astronomers submit descriptions of
proposed observing projects intended to
address specific scientific objectives. The
proposals are peer-reviewed by experts
from the community and the approved
projects are translated into a detailed de­­
scription of the observations to be made.
The observations are then performed
at the telescope, and the data collected
are made immediately available to the
corresponding research teams. The sci-
entific observations and their associated
calibration data are also used by ESO
scientists to monitor the quality of the
data and the behaviour of the instruments
in detail, to ensure that their performance
is always within their specifications. This
entire process relies on the continuous
transfer of information between the
observatories in Chile and ESO’s Head-
quarters in Garching, Germany.
26
All the scientific and calibration data
that are gathered are stored in the ESO
Science Archive Facility. This contains the
complete record of all the observations
obtained since the start of operations on
Paranal for the Very Large Telescope, its
interferometer and the survey telescopes
VISTA and the VST. It also contains
observations obtained with the La Silla
telescopes and with the APEX submilli­
metre radio telescope on Chajnantor.
Observations stored in the archive typi-
cally become publicly available one year
after they were obtained, thus allowing
them to be used by other researchers.
The traditional way of observing is
to allocate fixed dates on which the
astronomers must travel to the telescope
to carry out the observations themselves,
assisted by expert personnel at the
observatory. Known as visitor mode,
this allows astronomers to adapt their
observing strategies to the results as they
are obtained, as well as to the atmos-
pheric conditions. But there is no way
of guaranteeing at the time of allocating
dates that the necessary observing
conditions will be met.
ESO has developed an alternative
scheme of service observing in which
observations, fully specified by the
astronomers who proposed them, are
flexibly scheduled at the telescope and
carried out only when the conditions are
suitable. Each predefined observation
thus specifies the acceptable conditions
under which it should be obtained in
order to fulfil its scientific goals.
Although this kind of flexible scheduling
does not allow the astronomer to decide
the observing strategy in real time, it has
many advantages and these have made
service observing the mode of choice for
70% of the VLT users.
The data centre at
ESO’s Headquarters
in Garching bei
München, Germany,
which archives and
distributes data from
ESO’s telescopes.
Partnerships

Fostering cooperation in astronomy is

at the core of ESO’s mission and the
organisation has played a decisive role in Flags of the ESO
­Member States on the
creating a European Research Area for Very Large Telescope
astronomy and astrophysics. platform.

Every year, thousands of astronomers

from the Member States and beyond
carry out research using data collected at
the ESO observatory sites. Astronomers
often form international research teams,
with members in several countries and
their results are published in many hun-
dreds of scientific articles each year.

ESO has an extensive programme for

fellows (young astronomers with PhD
degrees) and students, thus contributing
to the mobility of European scientists.
Senior scientists from the Member States
and other countries work for periods
as visiting scientists at the ESO sites.
European Commission
In addition, ESO maintains a vigorous and EIROforum pledge
programme of international conferences to extend their col-
with themes in frontline astronomical laboration.
science and technology and provides
logistical support for the international
journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

In order to provide users with progres-

sively better astronomical telescopes and Group photo of the
­C onference “Science
instruments, ESO cooperates closely with from Next Generation
a large number of European high-tech Imaging Spectroscopic
industries. European industry plays a vital Surveys”.
role in the realisation of ESO projects.
Without the active and enthusiastic
participation of commercial partners from
all the Member States and Chile, such
projects would not be possible.

In the field of technology development

ESO maintains close connections with
many research groups at university insti-
tutes in the Member States and beyond.
Thus astronomers in the Member States
are deeply involved in the planning and
realisation of the scientific instruments
for current ESO telescopes, as well as
for other existing or planned telescopes.
Instrument development offers important
opportunities for national research cen-
tres of excellence, attracting many young
scientists and engineers.
M. McCaughrean (ESA)/ESO

Alvio Renzini at the

ESO@50 conference,
celebrating 50 years of
the European Southern
Observatory.

27
www.eso.org

ESO/T. Preibisch

ESO Headquarters
Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
Phone: +49 89 32006 0 | Fax: +49 89 3202362 | E-mail: information@eso.org

10.2014 — English