Latest European Southern Observatory Stories
Watch the Video: Artist’s Impression of Glycolaldehyde Molecules | Watch the Video: Sugar Molecules Found in the Young Star Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Most would assume that sugar is an essential part of life, but did you know it is actually considered a building block? Well, astronomers have now found these sweet organic molecules around a distant star. The finding reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters proves that the building blocks of life were...
Associated Universities Inc. (AUI) and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) have made a preliminary examination of the report released today from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Astronomy Portfolio Review Committee (PRC). Among the recommendations of that report are that the NSF’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) be fully divested from the NSF Astronomy Division’s portfolio of research facilities in the next five years, with no further...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online An international team of researchers led by EXOEarth scientists from Centro de Astrofisica daUniversidade do Porto (CAUP) argues that metals like Magnesium might have an important role to play in the formation of low mass planets. Using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) HARPS spectrograph, the team analyzed high resolution spectra of 1,111 sun-like stars. Of these stars, 109 are known to harbor high mass planets similar to...
[ Watch the Video: Moon Setting over ESO’s Paranal Observatory ] April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is having its 50th anniversary on October 5, 2012, and ESO is hosting two competitions to celebrate the event. ESO builds and operates some of the most advanced telescopes on Earth, including the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. These huge machines have made many fascinating discoveries about...
[ Watch Video 1 ] | [ Watch Video 2 ] | Watch Video 3 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have made a crucial step towards a scientific goal by observing the heart of a distant quasar with angular resolution. An international team of astronomers connected radio telescopes in Chile, Hawaii and Arizona for the first time using the technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), enabling them to make the sharpest observation ever of the center of a...
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has taken the most detailed image so far of a spectacular part of the stellar nursery called NGC 6357. The view shows many hot young stars, glowing clouds of gas and weird dust formations sculpted by ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds. Deep in the Milky Way in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion) lies NGC 6357 [1], a region of space where new stars are being born in of chaotic clouds of gas and dust [2]. The outer...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com [ Watch the video ] The European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has been given the go-ahead by the organization overseeing the project to move on with it. The $1.3 billion telescope will look for planets outside the solar system and those orbiting other stars in "habitable zones." The telescope will use a 127-feet mirror, helping it gather more than 12 times the light that the largest optical telescopes being used today gather. "Its unique...
Four Presidents at Paranal for signature of Pacific Alliance Treaty The presidents of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru met today at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile, seeing first hand the state-of-the-art telescopes and technology of ESO’s flagship site. The presidents gathered at Paranal for the fourth Summit of the Pacific Alliance, at which the Alliance’s Framework Agreement was ratified. On Wednesday 6 June, Presidents Sebastián Piñera of Chile, Juan...
A new image of the center of the distinctive galaxy Centaurus A, made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), shows how the new telescope, which is still under construction, allows astronomers to see with unprecedented quality through the opaque dust lanes that obscure the galaxy's center. Centaurus A is a massive elliptical radio galaxy (a galaxy that emits strong radio waves) and is the most prominent, as well as the nearest, radio galaxy in the sky. Its very...
By combining the light of three powerful infrared telescopes, an international research team has observed the active accretion phase of a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy tens of millions of light years away, a method that has yielded an unprecedented amount of data for such observations. The resolution at which they were able to observe this highly luminescent active galactic nucleus (AGN) has given them direct confirmation of how mass accretes onto black holes in centers of...
Latest European Southern Observatory Reference Libraries
Very Large Telescope -- The Very Large Telescope (VLT) consist of four optical telescopes that have 8.4 meter aperture. The VLT is a project of the European Southern Observatory organization. It is located at the Paranal Observatory on Cerro Paranal, a 2,635-m high mountain in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. The VLT consists of a cluster four of large telescopes, and an interferometer (VLTI) which will be used to resolve fine features. The telescopes have been named after the...
Overwhelmingly Large Telescope -- The European Southern Observatory has undertaken a concept study for the next generation of ground-based Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs). Dubbed OWL, ESO's concept is conceived as a 100 m. diameter optical and near-infrared, adaptive telescope. With milliarc second resolution and limiting magnitude V~38, OWL will be capable of imaging solar system objects at resolutions comparable to that offered by space probes, over much longer time scales. It...
La Silla Observatory -- La Silla is a 2400-m mountain, bordering the southern extremity of the Atacama desert in Chile. It is located about 160 Km north of La Serena. Its geographical coordinates are: Latitude 29 15' south & Longitude 70 44' west. Originally known as Cinchado, the mountain was renamed La Silla (the saddle) after its shape. It rises quite isolated and remote from any artificial light and dust sources (astronomy's worst enemies). La Silla was the first ESO...
European Southern Observatory -- ESO, the European Southern Observatory, was created in 1962 to: "establish and operate an astronomical observatory in the southern hemisphere, equipped with powerful instruments, with the aim of furthering and organising collaboration in astronomy". ESO is supported by Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. Other countries have expressed interest to become a member as well. ESO...
Mount Wilson Observatory -- astronomical observatory located in California on Mt. Wilson, near Pasadena. Mt. Wilson Observatory was founded in 1904 by George E. Hale. Its equipment includes 100-in. (2.5-m) and 60-in. (1.50-m) reflecting telescopes and two solar-tower telescopes 150 ft. (46 m) and 60 ft. (18 m) in length. The most recent addition is the CHARA (Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy) array operated by Georgia State Univ.; it consists of six 39-in. (1-m) aperture...
