Advanced press release search

Subscribe to receive news from ESO in your language!

Search results for ‘releases with Instruments matching 'UVES'.’

22 March 2007: Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, an international team of astronomers has shown how to use the chemical composition of stars in clusters to shed light on the formation of our Milky Way. This discovery is a fundamental test for the development of a new chemical tagging technique uncovering the birth and growth of our Galactic cradle.

eso0708 — Press Release

SN1987A's Twentieth Anniversary

24 February 2007: The unique supernova SN 1987A has been a bonanza for astrophysicists. It provided several observational 'firsts,' like the detection of neutrinos from an exploding star, the observation of the progenitor star on archival photographic plates, the signatures of a non-spherical explosion, the direct observation of the radioactive elements produced during the blast, observation of the formation of dust in the supernova, as well as the detection of circumstellar and interstellar material.

eso0638 — Press Release

Increasing the Odds of the Sweep

4 October 2006: Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have confirmed the extrasolar planet status of two of the 16 candidates discovered by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. One of the two confirmed exoplanets has a mass a little below 10 Jupiter masses, while the other is less than 3.8 Jupiter masses.

eso0637 — Press Release

Stellar Vampires Unmasked

2 October 2006: Astronomers have found possible proofs of stellar vampirism in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, they found that some hot, bright, and apparently young stars in the cluster present less carbon and oxygen than the majority of their sisters. This indicates that these few stars likely formed by taking their material from another star.

eso0634 — Press Release

A "Genetic Study" of the Galaxy

12 September 2006: Looking in detail at the composition of stars with ESO's VLT, astronomers are providing a fresh look at the history of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. They reveal that the central part of our Galaxy formed not only very quickly but also independently of the rest.

eso0633 — Press Release

Long-lasting but Dim Brethren of Cosmic Flashes

31 August 2006: Astronomers, using ESO's Very Large Telescope, have for the first time made the link between an X-ray flash and a supernova. Such flashes are the little siblings of gamma-ray bursts (GRB) and this discovery suggests the existence of a population of events less luminous than 'classical' GRBs, but possibly much more numerous.

eso0630 — Press Release

Stars Too Old to be Trusted?

10 August 2006: Analysing a set of stars in a globular cluster with ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers may have found the solution to a critical cosmological and stellar riddle. Until now, an embarrassing question was why the abundance of lithium produced in the Big Bang is a factor 2 to 3 times higher than the value measured in the atmospheres of old stars. The answer, the researchers say, lies in the fact that the abundances of elements measured in a star's atmosphere decrease with time.

eso0628 — Press Release

A Sub-Stellar Jonah

3 August 2006: Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered a rather unusual system, in which two planet-size stars, of different colours, orbit each other. One is a rather hot white dwarf, weighing a little bit less than half as much as the Sun. The other is a much cooler, 55 Jupiter-masses brown dwarf.

eso0616 — Press Release

Physics in Universe's Youth

8 May 2006: Using a quasar located 12.3 billion light-years away as a beacon, a team of astronomers detected the presence of molecular hydrogen in the farthest system ever, an otherwise invisible galaxy that we observe when the Universe was less than 1.5 billion years old, that is, about 10% of its present age. The astronomers find that there is about one hydrogen molecule for 250 hydrogen atoms. A similar set of observations for two other quasars, together with the most precise laboratory measurements, allows scientists to infer that the ratio of the proton to electron masses may have changed with time. If confirmed, this would have important consequences on our understanding of physics.

eso0606 — Press Release

The Invisible Galaxies That Could Not Hide

15 February 2006: Astronomers, using the unique capabilities offered by the high-resolution spectrograph UVES on ESO's Very Large Telescope, have found a metal-rich hydrogen cloud in the distant universe. The result may help to solve the missing metal problem and provides insight on how galaxies form.

eso0542 — Press Release

Allo, Allo? A Star is Ringing

21 December 2005: Astronomers have used ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Anglo-Australian Telescope in eastern Australia as a 'stellar stethoscope' to listen to the internal rumblings of a nearby star. The data collected with the VLT have a precision better than 1.5 cm/s, or less than 0.06 km per hour!

eso0536 — Press Release

Star on the Run

9 November 2005: Observations with Kueyen, one of the 8.2m telescopes composing the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), have led to the discovery of a short-lived massive star that is moving at a very high speed through the outer halo of the Milky Way galaxy and into intergalactic space. This finding could provide evidence for a previously unknown massive black hole in the heart of the Milky Way's closest neighbour, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

eso0425 — Press Release

How Old is the Milky Way ?

17 August 2004: Observations by an international team of astronomers [1] with the UVES spectrometer on ESO's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory (Chile) have thrown new light on the earliest epoch of the Milky Way galaxy. The first-ever measurement of the Beryllium content in two stars in a globular cluster (NGC 6397) - pushing current astronomical technology towards the limit - has made it possible to study the early phase between the formation of the first generation of stars in the Milky Way and that of this stellar cluster. This time interval was found to amount to 200 - 300 million years. The age of the stars in NGC 6397, as determined by means of stellar evolution models, is 13,400 ± 800 million years. Adding the two time intervals gives the age of the Milky Way, 13,600 ± 800 million years. The currently best estimate of the age of the Universe, as deduced, e.g., from measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background, is 13,700 million years. The new observations thus indicate that the first generation of stars in the Milky Way galaxy formed soon after the end of the ~200 million-year long "Dark Ages" that succeeded the Big Bang.

eso0415 — Press Release

Two Extremely Hot Exoplanets Caught in Transit

7 May 2004: A European team of astronomers [1] are announcing the discovery and study of two new extra-solar planets (exoplanets). They belong to the OGLE transit candidate objects and could be characterized in detail. This trebles the number of exoplanets discovered by the transit method; three such objects are now known. The observations were performed in March 2004 with the FLAMES multi-fiber spectrograph on the 8.2-m VLT Kueyen telescope at the ESO Paranal Observatory (Chile). They enabled the astronomers to measure accurate radial velocities for forty-one stars for which a temporary brightness "dip" had been detected by the OGLE survey. This effect might be the signature of the transit in front of the star of an orbiting planet, but may also be caused by a small stellar companion. For two of the stars (OGLE-TR-113 and OGLE-TR-132), the measured velocity changes revealed the presence of planetary-mass companions in extremely short-period orbits. This result confirms the existence of a new class of giant planets, designated "very hot Jupiters" because of their size and very high surface temperature. They are extremely close to their host stars, orbiting them in less than 2 (Earth) days. The transit method for detecting exoplanets will be "demonstrated" for a wide public on June 8, 2004, when planet Venus passes in front of the solar disc, cf. the VT-2004 programme.

eso0407 — Press Release

New Quasar Studies Keep Fundamental Physical Constant Constant

31 March 2004: Detecting or constraining the possible time variations of fundamental physical constants is an important step toward a complete understanding of basic physics and hence the world in which we live. A step in which astrophysics proves most useful. Previous astronomical measurements of the fine structure constant - the dimensionless number that determines the strength of interactions between charged particles and electromagnetic fields - suggested that this particular constant is increasing very slightly with time. If confirmed, this would have very profound implications for our understanding of fundamental physics. New studies, conducted using the UVES spectrograph on Kueyen, one of the 8.2-m telescopes of ESO's Very Large Telescope array at Paranal (Chile), secured new data with unprecedented quality. These data, combined with a very careful analysis, have provided the strongest astronomical constraints to date on the possible variation of the fine structure constant. They show that, contrary to previous claims, no evidence exist for assuming a time variation of this fundamental constant.

eso0329 — Press Release

Optical Detection of Anomalous Nitrogen in Comets

12 September 2003: A team of European astronomers [1] has used the UVES spectrograph on the 8.2-m VLT KUEYEN telescope to perform a uniquely detailed study of Comet LINEAR (C/2000 WM1) . This is the first time that this powerful instrument has been employed to obtain high-resolution spectra of a comet. At the time of the observations in mid-March 2002, Comet LINEAR was about 180 million km from the Sun, moving outwards after its perihelion passage in January. As comets are believed to carry "pristine" material - left-overs from the formation of the solar system, about 4,600 million years ago - studies of these objects are important to obtain clues about the origins of the solar system and the Earth in particular. The high quality of the data obtained of this moving 9th-magnitude object has permitted a determination of the cometary abundance of various elements and their isotopes [2]. Of particular interest is the unambiguous detection and measurement of the nitrogen-15 isotope. The only other comet in which this isotope has been observed is famous Comet Hale-Bopp - this was during the passage in 1997, when it was much brighter than Comet LINEAR. Most interestingly, Comet LINEAR and Comet Hale-Bopp display the same isotopic abundance ratio, about 1 nitrogen-15 atom for each 140 nitrogen-14 atoms ( 14 N/ 15 N = 140 ± 30) . That is about half of the terrestrial value (272). It is also very different from the result obtained by means of radio measurements of Comet Hale-Bopp ( 14 N/ 15 N = 330 ± 75). Optical and radio measurements concern different molecules (CN and HCN, respectively), and this isotopic anomaly must be explained by some differentiation mechanism. The astronomers conclude that part of the cometary nitrogen is trapped in macromolecules attached to dust particles.

eso0311 — Press Release

Glowing Hot Transiting Exoplanet Discovered

22 April 2003: More than 100 exoplanets in orbit around stars other than the Sun have been found so far. But while their orbital periods and distances from their central stars are well known, their true masses cannot be determined with certainty, only lower limits. This fundamental limitation is inherent in the common observational method to discover exoplanets - the measurements of small and regular changes in the central star's velocity, caused by the planet's gravitational pull as it orbits the star. However, in two cases so far, it has been found that the exoplanet's orbit happens to be positioned in such a way that the planet moves in front of the stellar disk, as seen from the Earth. This "transit" event causes a small and temporary dip in the star's brightness, as the planet covers a small part of its surface, which can be observed. The additional knowledge of the spatial orientation of the planetary orbit then permits a direct determination of the planet's true mass. Now, a group of German astronomers [1] have found a third star in which a planet, somewhat larger than Jupiter, but only half as massive, moves in front of the central star every 28.5 hours . The crucial observation of this solar-type star, designated OGLE-TR-3 [2] was made with the high-dispersion UVES spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the ESO Paranal Observatory (Chile). It is the exoplanet with the shortest period found so far and it is very close to the star, only 3.5 million km away. The hemisphere that faces the star must be extremely hot, about 2000 °C and the planet is obviously losing its atmosphere at high rate.

eso0228 — Press Release

A Glimpse of the Young Milky Way

30 October 2002: A faint star in the southern Milky Way, designated HE 0107-5240 , has been found to consist virtually only of hydrogen and helium . It has the lowest abundance of heavier elements ever observed , only 1/200,000 of that of the Sun - 20 times less than the previous record-holding star. This is the result of a major ongoing research project by an international team of astronomers [2]. It is based on a decade-long survey of the southern sky, with detailed follow-up observations by means of the powerful UV-Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the 8.2-m VLT KUEYEN telescope at the ESO Paranal Observatory in Chile. This significant discovery now opens a new window towards the early times when the Milky Way galaxy was young, possibly still in the stage of formation. It proves that, contrary to most current theories, comparatively light stars like HE 0107-5240 (with 80% of the mass of the Sun) may form in environments (nearly) devoid of heavier elements. Since some years, astronomers have been desperately searching for stars of the very first stellar generation in the Milky Way, consisting only of hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang. None have been detected so far and doubts have arisen that they exist at all. The present discovery provides new hope that it will ultimately be possible to find such stellar relics from the young Universe and thereby to study "unpolluted" Big Bang material.

eso0208 — Press Release

UVES Investigates the Environment of a Very Remote Galaxy

11 March 2002: Observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) have enabled an international group of astronomers [1] to study in unprecedented detail the surroundings of a very remote galaxy, almost 12 billion light-years distant [2]. The corresponding light travel time means that it is seen at a moment only about 3 billion years after the Big Bang. This galaxy is designated MS 1512-cB58 and is the brightest known at such a large distance and such an early time. This is due to a lucky circumstance: a massive cluster of galaxies (MS 1512+36) is located about halfway along the line-of-sight, at a distance of about 7 billion light-years, and acts as a gravitational "magnifying glass." Thanks to this lensing effect, the image of MS1512-cB58 appears 50 times brighter. Nevertheless, the apparent brightness is still as faint as magnitude 20.6 (i.e., nearly 1 million times fainter than what can be perceived with the unaided eye). Moreover, MS 1512-cB58 is located 36° north of the celestial equator and never rises more than 29° above the horizon at Paranal. It was therefore a great challenge to secure the present observational data with the UVES high-dispersion spectrograph on the 8.2-m VLT KUEYEN telescope. The extremely detailed UVES-spectrum of MS 1512-cB58 displays numerous signatures (absorption lines) of intergalactic gas clouds along the line-of-sight . Some of the clouds are quite close to the galaxy and the astronomers have therefore been able to investigate the distribution of matter in its immediate surroundings. They found an excess of material near MS 1512-cB58, possible evidence of a young supercluster of galaxies , already at this very early epoch. The new observations thus provide an invaluable contribution to current studies of the birth and evolution of structures in the early Universe. This is the first time this kind of observation has ever been done of a galaxy at such a large distance . All previous studies were based on much more luminous quasars (QSOs - extremely active galaxy nuclei). However, any investigation of the intergalactic matter around a quasar is complicated by the strong radiation and consequently, high ionization of the gas by the QSO itself, rendering an unbiased assessment of the gas distribution impossible.

eso0127 — Press Release

The Glory of a Nearby Star

1 August 2001: The solar corona is a beautiful sight during total solar eclipses. It is the uppermost region of the extended solar atmosphere and consists of a very hot (over 1 million degrees), tenuous plasma of highly ionised elements that emit strong X-ray radiation. There is also a much weaker coronal emission in the optical part of the spectrum. The Sun is a normal star and X-ray observations from rockets and orbiting X-ray telescopes have shown that many other stars also possess coronae. But due to observational limits of the telescopes available so far, the much fainter optical emission from stellar coronae had never been detected. Now, however, an optical coronal line from iron ions that have lost 12 electrons (Fe XIII) has for the first time been observed in a star other than the Sun. The object, a cool star named CN Leonis, is located at a distance of 8 light-years. This impressive observational feat was performed with the UV-Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the VLT 8.2-metre KUEYEN telescope at the ESO Paranal Observatory, within a programme by German astronomer Jürgen Schmitt and his collaborators at the University of Hamburg Observatory.

Showing 21 to 40 of 48

Previous Next

Usage of ESO Images, Videos, Web texts and Music

Send us your comments!

Subscribe to receive news from ESO in your language

Accelerated by CDN77

Terms & Conditions

Our use of Cookies

We use cookies that are essential for accessing our websites and using our services. We also use cookies to analyse, measure and improve our websites’ performance, to enable content sharing via social media and to display media content hosted on third-party platforms.

You can manage your cookie preferences and find out more by visiting 'Cookie Settings and Policy'.

ESO Cookies Policy

The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) is the pre-eminent intergovernmental science and technology organisation in astronomy. It carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities for astronomy.

This Cookies Policy is intended to provide clarity by outlining the cookies used on the ESO public websites, their functions, the options you have for controlling them, and the ways you can contact us for additional details.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of data stored on your device by websites you visit. They serve various purposes, such as remembering login credentials and preferences and enhance your browsing experience.

Categories of cookies we use

Essential cookies (always active): These cookies are strictly necessary for the proper functioning of our website. Without these cookies, the website cannot operate correctly, and certain services, such as logging in or accessing secure areas, may not be available; because they are essential for the website’s operation, they cannot be disabled.

Cookie ID/Name

Description/Purpose

Provider (1^st party or 3^rd party)

Browser session cookie or Stored cookie?

Duration

csrftoken

XSRF protection token. We use this cookie to protect against cross-site request forgery attacks.

1^st party

Stored

1 year

user_privacy

Your privacy choices. We use this cookie to save your privacy preferences.

1^st party

Stored

6 months

_grecaptcha

We use reCAPTCHA to protect our forms against spam and abuse. reCAPTCHA sets a necessary cookie when executed for the purpose of providing its risk analysis. We use www.recaptcha.net instead of www.google.com in order to avoid unnecessary cookies from Google.

3^rd party

Stored

6 months

Functional Cookies: These cookies enhance your browsing experience by enabling additional features and personalization, such as remembering your preferences and settings. While not strictly necessary for the website to function, they improve usability and convenience; these cookies are only placed if you provide your consent.

Cookie ID/Name

Description/Purpose

Provider (1^st party or 3^rd party)

Browser session cookie or Stored cookie?

Duration

Settings

preferred_language

Language settings. We use this cookie to remember your preferred language settings.

1^st party

Stored

1 year

ON | OFF

sessionid

ESO Shop. We use this cookie to store your session information on the ESO Shop. This is just an identifier which is used on the server in order to allow you to purchase items in our shop.

1^st party

Stored

2 weeks

ON | OFF

Analytics cookies: These cookies collect information about how visitors interact with our website, such as which pages are visited most often and how users navigate the site. This data helps us improve website performance, optimize content, and enhance the user experience; these cookies are only placed if you provide your consent. We use the following analytics cookies.

Matomo Cookies:

This website uses Matomo (formerly Piwik), an open source software which enables the statistical analysis of website visits. Matomo uses cookies (text files) which are saved on your computer and which allow us to analyze how you use our website. The website user information generated by the cookies will only be saved on the servers of our IT Department. We use this information to analyze www.eso.org visits and to prepare reports on website activities. These data will not be disclosed to third parties.

On behalf of ESO, Matomo will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage.

ON | OFF

Matomo cookies settings:

Cookie ID/Name

Description/Purpose

Provider (1^st party or 3^rd party)

Browser session cookie or Stored cookie?

Duration

Settings

_pk_id

Stores a unique visitor ID.

1^st party

Stored

13 months

_pk_ses

Session cookie temporarily stores data for the visit.

1^st party

Stored

30 minutes

_pk_ref

Stores attribution information (the referrer that brought the visitor to the website).

1^st party

Stored

6 months

_pk_testcookie

Temporary cookie to check if a visitor’s browser supports cookies (set in Internet Explorer only).

1^st party

Stored

Temporary cookie that expires almost immediately after being set.

Additional Third-party cookies on ESO websites: some of our pages display content from external providers, e.g. YouTube.

Such third-party services are outside of ESO control and may, at any time, change their terms of service, use of cookies, etc.

YouTube: Some videos on the ESO website are embedded from ESO’s official YouTube channel. We have enabled YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode, meaning that no cookies are set unless the user actively clicks on the video to play it. Additionally, in this mode, YouTube does not store any personally identifiable cookie data for embedded video playbacks. For more details, please refer to YouTube’s embedding videos information page.

Cookies can also be classified based on the following elements.

Regarding the domain, there are:

First-party cookies, set by the website you are currently visiting. They are stored by the same domain that you are browsing and are used to enhance your experience on that site;
Third-party cookies, set by a domain other than the one you are currently visiting.

As for their duration, cookies can be:

Browser-session cookies, which are deleted when the user closes the browser;
Stored cookies, which stay on the user's device for a predetermined period of time.

How to manage cookies

Cookie settings: You can modify your cookie choices for the ESO webpages at any time by clicking on the link Cookie settings at the bottom of any page.

In your browser: If you wish to delete cookies or instruct your browser to delete or block cookies by default, please visit the help pages of your browser:

Brave

Please be aware that if you delete or decline cookies, certain functionalities of our website may be not be available and your browsing experience may be affected.

You can set most browsers to prevent any cookies being placed on your device, but you may then have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site/page. And some services and functionalities may not work properly at all (e.g. profile logging-in, shop check out).

Updates to the ESO Cookies Policy

The ESO Cookies Policy may be subject to future updates, which will be made available on this page.

Additional information

For any queries related to cookies, please contact: pdprATesoDOTorg.

As ESO public webpages are managed by our Department of Communication, your questions will be dealt with the support of the said Department.