Press Releases

18 November 1998: The third astronomical instrument to be mounted on the ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) - following FORS1 and ISAAC - is now nearing completion at the ESO Headquarters in Garching (Bavaria, Germany). Housed in a modernistic building, some 15 km north of Munich, this is a major science and technology centre with advanced laboratory facilities.

3 November 1998: The appointment of Professor Riccardo Giacconi, Director General of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) since January 1, 1993, to the Presidency of Associated Universities, Inc. ( AUI ) in the USA, has been jointly announced by Professor Paul C. Martin, Chair of AUI's Board of Trustees and Mr. Henrik Grage, President of the ESO Council. Professor Giacconi will assume this new position at the end of his term at ESO as of July 1, 1999.

22 October 1998: Observations of famous Comet Hale-Bopp continue with the 15-m Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) at the La Silla Observatory. They show amazingly strong activity of this unusual object, also at the present, very large distance from the Sun. The radio observations document in detail the release of various molecules from the comet's icy nucleus. Of particular interest is the observed emission from methanol (CH 3 OH) and hydrogen cyanide (HCN) molecules, never before detected in any comet this far away.

7 October 1998: The FORS Team at Paranal has concluded the first phase of the extensive FORS1 commissioning tests at the first 8.2-m VLT Unit Telescope (UT1), successfully and according to the plan. Although this work was primarily aimed at testing the technical performance of this new instrument, it has also been possible to obtain some spectacular images already at this early stage. And now, for the first time, spectra [1] have also been observed with the VLT.

15 September 1998: In an extraordinary meeting at the ESO Headquarters, the ESO Council today endorsed ESO's involvement in the planning of a major new astronomical facility in the southern hemisphere. Some years from now, the Large Southern Array/Millimetre Array (LSA/MMA) may become the world's prime sub-mm/mm radio observatory [1] at a pristine site at 5000 m altitude in the Chilean Andes, not very far from the VLT Paranal Observatory.

31 July 1998: The first VLT 8.2-m telescope (UT1) is now undergoing a "Commissioning Phase" during which all systems are thoroughly tested and further tuned. Although priority is given to technical work, some astronomical images have been obtained during the recent weeks. Some days ago, during short periods when no technical tests were scheduled, "quick shots" were obtained of two comets, both of which are designated targets for space missions.

10 June 1998: Following the very successful First Light Event in late May, the first 8.2-m Unit Telescope (UT1) of the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) has continued to demonstrate its great potential. These developments are reported on a dedicated webpage with new VLT Information.

17 February 1998: Now that the big mechanical pieces of the first 8.2-metre unit telescope (UT1) of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) have been assembled, the work areas have shifted towards the many other components that are needed to make the first giant optical telescope in the southern hemisphere operational. Although most of these items may be of less impressive dimensions, they are equally indispensable to make a telescope of this size and weight point towards a given direction and follow the motion of the celestial objects to be observed with superior accuracy.

30 January 1998: While famous Comet Hale-Bopp continues its long voyage towards the outer reaches of the solar system, observations proceed with telescopes in the southern hemisphere. These research programmes aim at a better understanding of the further development of this very active comet as it moves away from the Sun and slowly cools. Among the key questions are for instance: "When will it cease to display a dust tail?" and "Will the nucleus undergo outbursts during which much fresh material will be dispensed into space, as this has occasionally happened by other comets (e.g. Halley)?"

23 January 1998: We show here five high-resolution photographic images (4-6 Mbytes) from the ESO Paranal Observatory, the site of ESO's Very Large Telescope Array (VLT).

13 January 1998: Within a few months, the first 8.2-meter Unit Telescope of the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) array will open its eye towards the sky above the Atacama desert. As documented by recent Press Photos from ESO, the construction work at the Paranal VLT Observatory is proceeding rapidly. Virtually all of the telescope components, including the giant Zerodur mirror, are now on the mountain.

1 August 1997: Observations of the bright southern quasar HE 2347-4342 with telescopes at the ESO La Silla Observatory and with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have provided a group of European astronomers [1] with an exceptional glimpse into an early, still unexplored transition period of the Universe.

22 July 1997: In the course of the major observational programme of asteroids by the Institute of Planetary Exploration of the German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR) [1] in Berlin, two of the staff astronomers, Stefano Mottola and Gerhard Hahn, have discovered a small satellite (moon) orbiting the asteroid (3671) Dionysus.

11 June 1997: This new and very detailed image of the famous circumstellar disk around the southern star Beta Pictoris was obtained with the ESO ADONIS adaptive optics system at the 3.6-m telescope and the Observatoire de Grenoble coronograph. It shows (in false colours) the scattered light at wavelength 1.25 micron (J band) and is one of the best images of this interesting feature obtained so far.

2 June 1997: Hans Hermann Heyer, professional ESO photographer at the Education and Public Relations Department in Garching, has prepared a remarkable exhibition of 45 photographs he obtained during two visits to ESO-Chile in 1996. It is on display at the ESO Headquarters until July 10, 1997.

28 April 1997: Brown Dwarfs are star-like objects which are too small to become real stars, yet too large to be real planets. Their mass is too small to ignite those nuclear processes which are responsible for the large energies and high temperatures of stars, but it is much larger than that of the planets we know in our solar system. Until now, very few Brown Dwarfs have been securely identified as such. Two are members of double-star systems, and a few more are located deep within the Pleiades star cluster. Now, however, Maria Teresa Ruiz of the Astronomy Department at Universidad de Chile (Santiago de Chile), using telescopes at the ESO La Silla observatory, has just discovered one that is all alone and apparently quite near to us. Contrary to the others which are influenced by other objects in their immediate surroundings, this new Brown Dwarf is unaffected and will thus be a perfect object for further investigations that may finally allow us to better understand these very interesting celestial bodies. It has been suggested that Brown Dwarfs may constitute a substantial part of the unseen dark matter in our Galaxy. This discovery may therefore also have important implications for this highly relevant research area.

9 April 1997: Circumstellar disks of gas and dust play a crucial role in the formation of stars and planets. Until now, high-resolution images of such disks around young stars within the Orion Nebula obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) constituted the most direct proof of their existence. Now, another circumstellar disk has been detected around a star in the Lagoon Nebula - also known as Messier 8 (M8) , a giant complex of interstellar gas and dust with many young stars in the southern constellation of Sagittarius and four times more distant than the Orion Nebula. The observations were carried out by an international team of scientists led by Bringfried Stecklum (Thüringer Landessternwarte, Tautenburg, Germany) [1] who used telescopes located at the ESO La Silla observatory and also observations from the HST archive. These new results are paving the road towards exciting research programmes on star formation which will become possible with the ESO Very Large Telescope.

11 March 1997: An international team of astronomers has used large telescopes in Chile and Australia to measure the biggest star in the sky. The star, designated R Doradus , is of the so-called red giant type and is located in the southern constellation of Dorado. Its apparent diameter (i.e., the size which the star appears to have when seen from the Earth) is larger than any other so far observed, except for the Sun. In particular, it exceeds by more than 30% that of Betelgeuse , which for the past 75 years has held the title of star with the largest apparent size.

15 January 1997: Recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have documented an unexpected and rapid, seven-fold brightening of an unusual double star at the centre of the impressive 47 Tucanae globular cluster in the southern sky. This is the first HST observation of such a rare phenomenon. The astronomers [1] who are involved in this observational program find that this event cannot be explained by any of the common processes known to occur in such stars.

14 January 1997: The following success story is a classical illustration of scientific progress through concerted interplay of observation and theory. It concerns a 35-year old mystery which has now been solved by means of exciting observations of a strange double star. An added touch is the successive involvement of astronomers connected to the European Southern Observatory.