ESOcast (2008)

ESO's Paranal Observatory has just been used as the key location for Quantum of Solace, the latest film in one of the most successful movie franchises – that of renowned secret agent 007.

In this second episode of the ESOcast Dr. J takes us to the centre of the Milky Way to talk about a supermassive black hole there located. We will hear from two scientists involved in an unprecedented 16-year long study, which used several of ESO’s flagship telescopes to produce the most detailed view ever of the surroundings of the monster lurking at our Galaxy’s heart. How were the hidden secrets of this tumultuous region unravelled? Watch this ESOcast and find out.

In this third episode of the ESOcast Dr. J takes us to the site of ALMA, the Atacama Millimeter / submillimeter Array in the Atacama region in Chile. ALMA is an observatory under construction 5000 metres above sea-level, on the plateau of Chajnantor – high enough to be literally breathtaking.

Have you ever wondered what it must be like to be an astronomer? In this fourth episode of the ESOcast, Dr. J takes us behind the scenes at ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile to show us what a day in the life of an ESO staff astronomer is like.

ESO's La Silla Observatory, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary, became the largest astronomical observatory of its time. It led Europe to the frontline of astronomical research, and is still one of the most scientifically productive in ground-based astronomy.

Well-known exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor announced on 21 April 2009 the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, “e”, in the famous system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of our Earth. The team also refined the orbit of the planet Gliese 581 d, first discovered in 2007, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist. These amazing discoveries are the outcome of more than four years of observations using the most successful low-mass-exoplanet hunter in the world, the HARPS spectrograph attached to the 3.6-metre ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile.

At observatories worldwide most of the glory goes to the astronomers who provide us with new vistas of the heavens, but this is only possible thanks to the many experienced technicians and engineers who accomplish amazing work behind the scenes. They work against the clock to ensure that the telescopes function optimally to deliver outstanding results.

ESO has just released a stunning new image of a field of stars towards the constellation of Carina. This striking view is ablaze with a flurry of stars of all colours and brightnesses, some of which glow against a backdrop of gas and dust clouds. A complex nebula created by previous, violent ejections surrounds an unusual star in the middle of this field. Astronomers have discovered that this star has a companion. Interactions in this double star system, surrounded by a dusty disc, may be the engine fuelling the star’s remarkable nebula.

On 19 October 2009, at an international exoplanet conference, the team who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS, the spectrograph for ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope, reports on the incredible discovery of more than 30 new exoplanets, cementing HARPS’s position as the world’s foremost exoplanet hunter.

VISTA (the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) is a new telescope that has just started work at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile and has made its first release of pictures. VISTA is a survey telescope working at infrared wavelengths and is the world’s largest survey telescope. Its large mirror, wide field of view and very sensitive detectors will reveal a completely new view of the southern sky. Spectacular pictures of the Flame Nebula, the Centre of the Milky Way and the Fornax Galaxy Cluster show that it is working very well.

The Orion Nebula reveals many of its hidden secrets in a dramatic image taken by ESO’s new VISTA survey telescope. VISTA — the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy — is the latest addition to ESO’s Paranal Observatory. It is the largest survey telescope in the world and is dedicated to mapping the sky at infrared wavelengths. The telescope’s huge field of view can show the full splendour of the Orion Nebula and VISTA’s infrared vision also allows it to peer deeply into dusty regions that are normally hidden and expose the curious behaviour of the very active young stars buried there.

Every night, all year round, the ESO Very Large Telescope, or VLT, opens its four giant eyes to scrutinise the beautiful southern skies. Each eye is a huge mirror, 8.2 metres in diameter, that gathers the light of the night sky, and reflects it into optical systems that form ultra-sharp images of the Universe. But keeping the VLT´s eyes clear requires each mirror to be cleaned and recoated occasionally, a delicate and complex procedure.

On 26 April 2010, the ESO Council selected Cerro Armazones as the site for the planned 42-metre European Extremely Large Telescope. Cerro Armazones is an isolated mountain at 3060 metres altitude in the central part of Chile's Atacama Desert, some 130 kilometres south of the town of Antofagasta and about 20 kilometres away from Cerro Paranal, home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope.

High on the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes, the first antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array, or ALMA for short, move in unison.

For the first time, astronomers have been able to directly follow the motion of an exoplanet as it moves to the other side of its host star. The planet has the smallest orbit so far of all directly imaged exoplanets, lying as close to its host star as Saturn is to the Sun. Scientists believe that it may have formed in a similar way to the giant planets in the Solar System. This discovery proves that gas giant planets can form within discs in only a few million years, a short time in cosmic terms. http://www.eso.

The Sun sets behind Cerro Paranal in the Chilean Atacama desert. While astronomers get ready to observe with ESO's Very Large Telescope, Nature prepares for her own grand display. As night falls over the desert, the southern sky reveals its nocturnal beauty, leaving the spectator in silent amazement. Some people, however, don’t just stare at the spectacle. With great skill, they record these unique moments for everyone to see - they are the photographers of the night.

Astronomers using ESO instruments have discovered a remarkable extrasolar planetary system that has some striking similarities to our own Solar System. At least five planets are orbiting the Sun-like star HD 10180, and the regular pattern of their orbits is similar to that observed for our neighbouring planets. One of the new extrasolar worlds could be only 1.4 times the mass of the Earth, making it the least massive exoplanet ever found. This video podcast explains how these faraway planets were detected and exactly what we know about them.

Today's telescopes study the sky across the electromagnetic spectrum. Each part of the spectrum tells us different things about the Universe, giving us more pieces of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle. The most powerful telescopes on the ground and in space have joined forces over the last decade in a unique observing campaign, known as the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, or GOODS, which reaches across the spectrum and deep back into cosmic time.

A European team of astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has measured the distance to the most remote galaxy so far. By carefully analysing the very faint glow of the galaxy they have found that they are seeing it when the Universe was only about 600 million years old (a redshift of 8.6). These are the first confirmed observations of a galaxy whose light is clearing the opaque hydrogen fog that filled the cosmos at this early time.

In this episode of the ESOcast, we travel to the inhospitable but dramatic landscape of the Atacama Desert. Beneath the ground there, a new high-speed data cable is helping connect Paranal, the world’s most advanced astronomical observatory, with scientists and engineers based at ESO headquarters in Germany. Dr J presents this new project and explains its impact on scientific research at ESO.

An exoplanet orbiting a star that entered our galaxy, the Milky Way, from another galaxy has been detected by a European team of astronomers using the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The Jupiter-like planet is particularly unusual, as it is orbiting a star nearing the end of its life and could be about to be engulfed by it, giving clues about the fate of our own planetary system in the distant future.

This video podcast explains the ESO Very Large Telescope’s Rapid Response Mode, which makes it possible to observe gamma-ray bursts only a few minutes after they are first spotted. As the optical afterglow of a gamma-ray burst fades extremely rapidly, observations must start as quickly as possible. And the Very Large Telescope has the capability to master this time critical issue better than any other telescope.

The barren landscape surrounding the Paranal Observatory in Chile is stunning, but for the ESO staff who work there, on-site recreational activities are important for entertainment and general wellbeing. In this episode of the ESOcast, we follow three staff members in a unique behind-the-scenes look at the Paranal Residencia at the observatory's base camp -- a remarkable hotel that has won architectural design awards -- to see some of their leisure activities.

Life as an ESO astronomer is demanding, but working on one of the world's most powerful telescopes is also immensely rewarding. In this episode of the ESOcast, come with us as we follow ESO astronomer Henri Boffin through his day-to-day life. Learn all about what it takes to be a professional astronomer producing top-notch science, and see what it's like working in exotic locations and collaborating with astronomers from around the world. Get a glimpse behind the scenes at the Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal, and see the site's famous Residencia, a home-from-home for staff on duty at the observatory.

The observations from ESO's powerful ground-based telescopes are veritable treasures, stored in a huge archive usually only visited by professional astronomers on a mission. And yet, an amateur astrophotographer from Russia managed to uncover a veritable gem from ESO's Hidden Treasures, winning a trip to Chile to observe with the Very Large Telescope.

The Atacama Desert in northern Chile -- one of the driest and most hostile environments in the world. Under the blazing Sun, only a few species of animals and plants have evolved to survive. Yet, this is where the European Southern Observatory operates its Very Large Telescope. Running this technological oasis in the barren desert, and making it a comfortable place for people to live, poses many challenges.

This ESOcast introduces the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), the latest addition to ESO's Paranal Observatory. This new telescope has just made its first release of impressive images of the southern sky. The VST is a state-of-the-art 2.6-metre telescope, with the huge 268-megapixel camera OmegaCAM at its heart. It is designed to map the sky both quickly and with very fine image quality. It is a visible-light telescope that perfectly complements ESO's VISTA infrared survey telescope. New images of the Omega Nebula and the globular cluster Omega Centauri demonstrate the VST's power.

This joint episode of the Hubblecast and ESOcast presents Abell 2744, an unusual cluster of galaxies nicknamed "Pandora's Cluster" by the astronomers who have studied it. Looking at the galaxies, gas and dark matter in the cluster, scientists have reconstructed the series of huge collisions that created it, and have uncovered some strange phenomena never seen together before.

This ESOcast is about the discovery of the most distant quasar found to date. This brilliant beacon is powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun. It is by far the brightest object yet discovered in the early Universe.

In the pursuit of pristine skies, ESO, the European Southern Observatory, operates its telescopes far beyond Europe, in the remote and arid landscape of the Atacama Desert in Chile. Check why in this ESOcast episode.

We have all looked up at the sky at night and seen the stars twinkle. It may be pretty and romantic, but it is also a big problem for astronomers, as the shimmering starlight blurs observations. In this ESOcast we visit the Allgäu public observatory amid the picturesque landscape of southern Germany. Here, as night falls, a team of scientists and engineers prepares to field test a laser guide star unit, which will soon be on its way to ESO’s Paranal Observatory. This cutting edge technology can help astronomers cancel out the effects of the turbulence in the atmosphere and obtain much sharper views of the Universe.

Astronomers using ESO’s leading exoplanet hunter HARPS have today announced more than fifty newly discovered planets around other stars. Among these are many rocky planets not much heavier than the Earth. One of them in particular seems to orbit in the habitable zone around its star. This ESOcast we look at how astronomers discover these distant worlds and what the future may hold for finding rocky worlds like the Earth that may support life.

The most complex ground-based astronomy observatory in the world, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has officially opened for astronomers. The first released image, from a telescope still under construction, reveals a view of the Universe that cannot be seen at all by visible-light and infrared telescopes. Thousands of scientists from around the world competed to be the first few researchers to explore some of the darkest, coldest, furthest, and most hidden secrets of the cosmos with this new astronomical tool.

On Saturday 15 October 2011 ESO opened the doors of its headquarters in Garching bei München, Germany, to the public. Throughout the day, thousands of visitors had the chance to help build a full-size mock-up mirror of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) -- the largest planned telescope in the world -- and to experience many other aspects of ESO's work.

This ESOcast describes how astronomers have accurately measured the diameter of the faraway dwarf planet Eris for the first time by catching it as it passed in front of a faint star. This event was seen at the end of 2010 by telescopes in Chile, including the TRAPPIST telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. The observations show that Eris is an almost perfect twin of Pluto in size. Eris seems to have a very reflective surface, suggesting that it is covered in ice, probably a frozen atmosphere.

Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have discovered a gas cloud with several times the mass of the Earth accelerating towards the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. This is the first time ever that the approach of such a doomed cloud to a supermassive black hole has been observed. This ESOcast explains the new results and includes spectacular simulations of how the cloud will break up over the next few years.

In the past two decades, astronomers have made a truly revolutionary discovery: that the cosmos is not only expanding, but is doing so at an ever-faster rate. The discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Leading up to ESO's 50th anniversary in October 2012, we are releasing eight special ESOcasts, each a chapter from the movie Europe to the Stars -- ESO's First 50 Years of Exploring the Southern Sky. This first special episode — entitled “Going South” — describes the birth of ESO, and in particular why astronomers from European countries decided to explore the southern sky by placing an astronomical observatory in Chile.

"Looking Up" is the second special episode of this series and ESOcast 42 overall. In it we look at how, over the past fifty years, ESO has helped to unravel some of the mysteries of the Universe in which we live. Astronomers were in need of more powerful tools to observe the sky and ESO provided them. A new generation of revolutionary ground-based telescopes has offered astronomers a front-row seat to study the wonders of the Universe. From the relative proximity of the planets in our Solar System to very distant galaxies, some of which are seen soon after the Universe was born, almost fourteen billion years ago, ESO’s telescopes and advanced instrumentation are allowing astronomers to peer deeper into space than ever before.

The third special episode of this series -- ESOcast 43 overall -- presents ESO’s flagship facility: the Very Large Telescope (VLT). In this episode we discover the state-of-the-art technology behind this telescope, which has provided astronomers with an unequalled view of the Universe. To obtain the sharpest images of the sky, the VLT has to cope with two major effects that distort the images of celestial objects. The first one is mirror deformations due to their large sizes. This problem is corrected using a computer-controlled support system — active optics — that ensures that the mirrors keep their desired shapes under all circumstances. The second effect is produced by Earth’s atmosphere, which makes stars appear blurry, even with the largest telescopes. Adaptive optics is a real-time correction of the distortions produced by the atmosphere using computer-controlled mirrors that deform hundreds of times per second to counteract the atmospheric effects.

Leading up to ESO’s 50th anniversary in October 2012, we are releasing eight special ESOcasts, each a chapter from the movie Europe to the Stars -- ESO’s First 50 Years of Exploring the Southern Sky. ESOcast 44 — entitled Changing Views — is the fourth special episode of this series. Since its birth, fifty years ago, ESO has helped to improve our knowledge of the Universe by means of successive generations of powerful optical ground-based telescopes. But there are other ways to collect the light from distant objects. In this episode, we discover how ESO has helped astronomers to explore the Universe at longer wavelengths, such as the infrared and radio regimes.

ESOcast 45 -- Reaching Out -- is the fifth special episode of this series. In it we focus on ESO's mission of curiosity, wonder and inspiration, proclaimed through cooperation and outreach. Indeed, cooperation has always been the basis for ESO's success, ever since the organisation was founded fifty years ago. Together, ESO's Member States enable the best possible astronomical science at the world's largest observatories. ESO also works closely with industry, universities and research institutes around the world in developing state-of-the-art technologies. Furthermore, through engagement with the public, ESO provides countless ways to participate in the discovery of the cosmos, inviting everyone to join this exciting adventure.

ESOcast 46 is the sixth special episode of this series. It describes how state-of-the-art cameras and spectrographs help ESO’s powerful telescopes collect and analyse the faint light from the distant Universe. Without these instruments, ESO’s eyes on the sky would be blind. Today’s astronomical images are very different from those from the 1960s. Back then, astronomers used large photographic glass plates, which were not very sensitive and hard to handle. Nowadays, ESO’s telescopes use some of the largest and most sensitive electronic detectors in the world. They catch almost every cosmic photon and recover almost every possible bit of information. For instance, the VLT Survey Telescope’s camera — OmegaCAM — has 32 detectors, which team up to produce spectacular images of the Universe, each with an impressive 268 million pixels. But astronomy is not only about taking breathtaking images.

In dieser speziellen Folge – ESOcast Nr. 47 insgesamt – blicken wir auf eine der größten Herausforderungen, die Astronomen über die Jahrhunderte weiterverfolgt haben: die Suche nach Leben im Universum. Die ESO hat eine wichtige Rolle in dieser aufregenden Reise gespielt. Das 3,6-Meter-Teleskop ist einer der erfolgreichsten Planetenjäger. Dank des HARPS-Spektrografen konnten Astronomen mehr als 150 Planeten entdecken. Weitere wichtige Meilensteine bei der Untersuchung von Exoplaneten wurden mit dem Very Large Telescope (VLT) erzielt. Zum Beispiel nahm ein Team von Astronomen im Jahr 2004 das erste Bild eines Planeten außerhalb des Sonnensystems auf (eso0428). Außerdem konnten Astronomen die Atmosphäre einer Supererde analysieren, des Planeten GJ 1214b, der 2,6 mal so groß wie die Erde ist. Sie konnten zum ersten Mal die Atmosphäre für einen solchen Objekttyp charakterisieren und fanden heraus, dass dieser Planet eine heiße und dampfende Welt ist (eso1047).

ESOcast 48 is the eighth special episode of this series. Die achte und letzte Episode der Serie erklärt wie die ESO – basierend auf gesammelten Erfahrungen der letzten 50 Jahre ihrer Geschichte – auch in Zukunft gedenkt die ewige Sehnsucht der Astronomen zu erfüllen: den Bau noch größerer Teleskope. Das erste Teleskop der nächsten Generation auf dem Chajnantor-Plateau ist fast fertiggestellt: Das Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), ein Gemeinschaftsprojekt von Europa, Nordamerika und Asien, wird aus 66 Präzisionsantennen bestehen und wird im Jahr 2013 fertiggestellt sein. Wie ein riesiges Teleskop arbeitend wird ALMA die feinsten Details des kühlen Universums untersuchen: die Geburt der ersten Galaxien, Blicke in die staubigen Wolken molekularen Gases – Sternentstehungsgebiete, in denen neue Sterne und Planeten geboren werden.

This exciting episode of the ESOcast gives viewers an exclusive backstage pass to see what went on behind the scenes while filming the ESO live webcast “A Day in the Life of ESO”.

This episode of the ESOcast introduces a new type of ESOcasts called "Chile Chill". These ESOcasts offer a calm experience of the Chilean night sky and ESO's observatory sites, undisturbed by facts or narration. In this episode we follow a typical night of observing for ESO's telescopes.

One of the most powerful supercomputers in the world has now been fully installed and tested at its remote, high altitude site in the Andes of northern Chile. This marks one of the major remaining milestones toward completion of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the most elaborate ground-based telescope in history. The special-purpose ALMA correlator has over 134 million processors and performs up to 17 quadrillion operations per second, a speed comparable to the fastest general-purpose supercomputer in operation today.