ESO is one of the world's leading research organisations. It is dedicated to astronomy and astrophysics, and operates the La Silla Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in Chile, on behalf of its thirteen member states.
ESO, the European Southern Observatory, builds and operates a suite of the world's most advanced ground-based astronomical telescopes.
Latest News Stories
Watching a 'New Star' Make the Universe Dusty
Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer, and its remarkable acuity, astronomers were able for the first time to witness the appearance of a shell of dusty gas around a star that just erupted, and follow its evolution for more than 100 days. This provides the astronomers with a new way to estimate the distance of this object and obtain invaluable information on the operating mode of stellar vampires, dense stars that suck material from a companion.
Announcements
- New VLT High Definition Video Material for Broadcasters is available for download (8/7/2008)
- ESO Messenger No. 132 available for download (26/6/2008)
- News from SPIE Astronomical Instrumentation in Marseille can be found in the ESO Blog (24/6/2008)
- The ESO Annual Report 2007 (124 pages) is available (17/6/2008)
- Top Secret: the 'VLT files' (6/6/2008)
Latest Blog Posts
- Science Education (22/07/2008)
- Let’s Jazz! (21/07/2008)
- Science in the Media (21/07/2008)
- A Monster and the Rubik’s cube (20/07/2008)
- The Universe and Reality (19/07/2008)
Visit the blog at http://www.eso.org/blog/!
James Bond at Paranal
Image of the Week
Moving an antenna
Panorama
Look around inside a VLT dome! (Quicktime VR)
