Latest news:

July 15, 2005: Read the post-impact interview with Olivier Hainaut, one of the lead scientist involved in the Deep Impact at ESO campaign.

July 14, 2005: Ten days after part of the Deep Impact spacecraft plunged onto Comet Tempel 1, astronomers are back in the ESO Offices in Santiago, after more than a week of observing at the ESO La Silla Paranal Observatory. In this unprecedented observing campaign - among the most ambitious ever conducted by a single observatory - the astronomers have collected a large amount of invaluable data on this comet. It appears most likely that the impactor did not create a large new zone of activity and may have failed to liberate a large quantity of pristine material from beneath the surface. Read more and see the latest images showing the evolution of the comet in ESO Press Release 19/05.

Press communications

July 14, 2005: Comet Tempel 1 Went Back to Sleep - Astronomers Having Used ESO Telescopes Start Analysing Unique Dataset on the Comet Following the Deep Impact Mission

July 5, 2005: Post-Impact Observations at ESO

July 4, 2005: Looking for Water

July 4, 2005: DI Campaign at ESO - Update 04/07/2005

July 3, 2005: DI Campaign at ESO - Update 03/07/2005

July 1, 2005: Getting Ready for Cosmic Hit

July 1, 2005: Looking for molecules

June 13, 2005: Monitoring the Comet

May 25, 2005: Preparing for the Impact - ESO Telescopes Take Snapshot of Comet 9P/Tempel 1 in Readiness for Major Observation Campaign.

May 25, 2005: The DI Campaign at ESO

EBU Broadcast from Paranal

The Second German Channel ZDF - which is presently at Paranal filming the astronomers observing the comet - will send two 5-10 minutes packages via EBU: On July 3, at 16:00-16:15 CEST (pre-impact) and on July 5, at 5:00-6:00 CEST (post-impact).

ESO holded a Press Event at ESO HQ in Garching (Germany) on July 4-5, 2005.
See the full programme here.

We made a live webcast on July 5, 2005, from 5:00 till 6:00 a.m. CEST, with presentation of the first results at ESO.

JENAM 2005

On July 6, in Liège (Belgium), a press conference was organised at the Joint European and National Astronomy Meeting (JENAM) conference about two themes: comets and astrobiology. The comets part of course put emphasis on the Deep Impact mission and, more particularly, focus on the science obtained from ground-based observatiosn. Two comet specialists participating to this observing campaign will answer your questions: Damien Hutsemékers, in Liège, and Emmanuel Jehin, live from the Cerro Paranal Observatory. For more details, go to http://www.astro.ulg.ac.be/RPub/Colloques/JENAM/media/media.html or read the press announcement.