ESA Science Programme’s new small satellite will study super-Earths

ESA - Cheops Mission poster.


19 October 2012

Studying planets around other stars will be the focus of the new small Science Programme mission, Cheops, ESA announced today. Its launch is expected in 2017.

Cheops – for CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite – will target nearby, bright stars already known to have planets orbiting around them.

Through high-precision monitoring of the star’s brightness, scientists will search for the telltale signs of a ‘transit’ as a planet passes briefly across its face.

In turn, this will allow an accurate measurement of the radius of the planet. For those planets with a known mass, the density will be revealed, providing an indication of the internal structure.

Artist impression of Cheops

These key parameters will help scientists to understand the formation of planets from a few times the mass of the Earth – ‘super-Earths’ – up to Neptune-sized worlds.

It will also identify planets with significant atmospheres and constrain the migration of planets during the formation and evolution of their parent systems. 

Cheops is the first of a possible new class of small missions to be developed as part of ESA’s Science Programme.

“By concentrating on specific known exoplanet host stars, Cheops will enable scientists to conduct comparative studies of planets down to the mass of Earth with a precision that simply cannot be achieved from the ground,” said Professor Alvaro Giménez-Cañete, ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration.

“The mission was selected from 26 proposals submitted in response to the Call for Small Missions in March, highlighting the strong interest of the scientific community in dedicated, quick-turnaround missions focusing on key open issues in space science.”

Planet transit in front of a star

Possible future small missions in the Science Programme should be low cost and rapidly developed, in order to offer greater flexibility in response to new ideas from the scientific community.

With a dedicated science focus, they would provide a natural complement to the broader Medium- and Large-class missions of ESA’s Science Programme.

Cheops will be implemented as a partnership between ESA and Switzerland, with a number of other ESA Member States delivering substantial contributions.

“This continues the 40-year success story of Swiss scientists and industry at the forefront of space science,” said Professor Willy Benz, Center for Space and Habitability at the University of Bern.

The mission will also provide unique targets for more detailed studies of exoplanet atmospheres by the next generation of telescopes now being built, such as the ground-based European Extremely Large Telescope and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

Cheops will operate in a Sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 800 km. It has a planned mission lifetime of 3.5 years and part of the observing time will be open to the wider scientific community.

Related links:

Defining the Cosmic Vision: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMNNJ2IU7E_index_0.html

Missions beyond imagination: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM8OJ2IU7E_index_0.html

Cosmic Vision in depth: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=100

Bern University - Cheops Homepage: http://cheops.unibe.ch/

Credits: ESA / University of Bern / CNES.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Mars Soil Sample Delivered for Analysis Inside Rover

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) patch.

Oct. 18, 2012

Mission Status Report

Image above: Three bite marks left in the Martian ground by the scoop on the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity are visible in this image taken by the rover's right Navigation Camera during the mission's 69th Martian day, or sol (Oct. 15, 2012). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has ingested its first solid sample into an analytical instrument inside the rover, a capability at the core of the two-year mission.

The rover's Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument is analyzing this sample to determine what minerals it contains.

"We are crossing a significant threshold for this mission by using CheMin on its first sample," said Curiosity's project scientist, John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "This instrument gives us a more definitive mineral-identifying method than ever before used on Mars: X-ray diffraction. Confidently identifying minerals is important because minerals record the environmental conditions under which they form."

Image above: The robotic arm on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity delivered a sample of Martian soil to the rover's observation tray for the first time during the mission's 70th Martian day, or sol (Oct. 16, 2012). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

The sample is a sieved portion -- about as much material as in a baby aspirin -- from the third scoop collected by Curiosity as a windblown patch of dusty sand called "Rocknest." The rover's robotic arm delivered the sample to CheMin's opened inlet funnel on the rover's deck on Oct. 17.

The previous day, the rover shook the scooped material inside sample-processing chambers to scrub internal surfaces of any residue carried from Earth. One earlier scoopful was also used for cleaning. Additional repetitions of this cleaning method will be used before delivery of a future sample to the rover's other internal analytic instrument, the Sample Analysis at Mars investigation, which studies samples' chemistry.

Various small bits of light-toned material on the ground at Rocknest have affected the rover's activities in the past several days. One piece about half an inch (1.3 centimeters) long was noticed on Oct. 7. The rover team postponed use of the robotic arm for two days while investigating this object, and assessed it to be debris from the spacecraft.

This image shows part of the small pit or bite created when NASA's Mars rover Curiosity collected its second scoop of Martian soil at a sandy patch called "Rocknest." Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Images taken after Curiosity collected its second scoop of Rocknest material on Oct. 12 showed smaller bits of light-toned material in the hole dug by the scooping action. This led to discarding that scoopful rather than using it to scrub the processing mechanisms. Scientists assess these smaller, bright particles to be native Martian material, not from the spacecraft.

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) "Curiosity". Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

"We plan to learn more both about the spacecraft material and about the smaller, bright particles," said Curiosity Project Manager Richard Cook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. "We will finish determining whether the spacecraft material warrants concern during future operations. The native Mars particles become fodder for the mission's scientific studies."

During a two-year prime mission, researchers are using Curiosity's 10 instruments to assess whether the study area has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the project and built Curiosity. For more about Curiosity, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / JPL / Guy Webster.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

How Space Station Can Help Humans Follow Curiosity to Mars and Beyond

ISS - International Space Station patch.

Oct. 18, 2012

With all of the excitement of the Mars Curiosity landing, many are looking to move from robots to humans for exploration beyond Earth's orbit. Keeping in mind the Seven Minutes of Terror, just imagine the nail-biting moments of putting people into the harsh environment of space far from their home planet. Taking the guess work out of long-duration exploration, however, is one of the benefits of the International Space Station. This orbiting laboratory serves as a test bed for technology and helps researchers understand how to prepare for extended trips in space.

"The space station is so valuable in this effort because it provides so much of what encompasses a long-duration transit mission, but with the convenience and lower risk of being located in low Earth orbit," said George Nelson, manager of International Space Station Technology Demonstration with NASA.

Image above: NASA astronaut Andrew Feustel, STS-134 mission specialist, installs the Materials on International Space Station Experiment – 8, or MISSE-8, hardware. MISSE-8 is a test bed for materials and computing elements attached to the outside of the International Space Station. (NASA).

Communications is one of the concerns that the space station can assist with, as delays of radio and telemetry information between the crew and mission control increase the further a vehicle gets from the Earth. Current space station operations rely on fast and almost continuous voice, data, command, and telemetry transmissions with controllers on the ground. Mars missions, however, could have up to a 20-minute delay in sending and receiving data. While the timing varies from destination to destination, the approach to preparing for continued operations is the same.

Astronauts need proven procedures for how to operate independently from mission control. Aboard station, the crew practices countermeasures for delays by operating certain activities with self-enforced lapses in communications. For instance, in the summer of 2012 astronauts successfully performed preventative maintenance on the COLBERT on-orbit treadmill while purposely not speaking with flight controllers. This is a step in the right direction for creating autonomy.

Image above: The Amine Swingbed assembly, shown here, is a life-support technology undergoing testing aboard the International Space Station. (NASA).

"The operations community has recently worked to revise many space station crew procedures to eliminate the need for communication with the ground," said Nelson. "We are currently testing some of these revised procedures on station to verify that they can be performed effectively. In addition, we are attempting new procedure formats, uplinked videos for instance, that may be even more effective."

The Materials International Space Station Experiment, or MISSE, series of investigations also helps with the development of protective materials. These advances may safeguard future vehicles and crew against things like radiation, extreme temperatures, atomic oxygen, and sunlight. The samples fly for set durations of time in direct contact with the space environment, prior to returning to the ground for testing.

Maintaining a safe living area in space requires technology advances not only for vehicle exteriors, but for inside as well. Researchers and engineers continually look to find better ways to provide a crew with clean, sustainable air and water. For instance, aboard the station the Environmental Control and Life Support System, or ECLSS, advances scientific understanding and design elements to improve future closed-loop life support systems.

Image above: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this close-up of Mars, the Red Planet, when it was just 34,648,840 miles (55,760,220 kilometers) away from Earth. Mars is just one of the potential destinations for long duration exploration that may benefit from the use of the International Space Station as a technology test bed. (NASA).

Other benefits of this on-orbit testing include greater efficiency, design improvements to reduce equipment mass, and accelerated technology developments thanks to longer trial periods in microgravity. One new life support technology currently undergoing testing aboard station is the Amine Swingbed. This equipment is designed to remove carbon dioxide from the living space inside the modules of the orbiting laboratory. When humans take in oxygen, they breathe out carbon dioxide, which needs to be scrubbed from the air to ensure continued crew health. This system is more compact and runs on less power than its predecessors.

International Space Station (ISS). (NASA)

"Testing of various life support systems is an ideal use of the space station," said Nelson. "Reliability of these systems on long distance/duration missions is paramount. We can verify design reliability in the microgravity environment by using them on station without any mission or crew risk, since the existing systems are always available."

The Curiosity of humanity may have reached Mars first, but it is our continued innovations and testing, like those done aboard the space station, that will help people follow the lander to the Red Planet and beyond.

Related Links:

Mars Curiosity: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) landing animation - Seven Minutes of Terror: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki_Af_o9Q9s

COLBERT: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/COLBERT.html

MISSE: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/MISSE-8.html

ECLSS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISS_ECLSS

Amine Swingbed: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/Amine_Swingbed.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Johnson Space Center / Jessica Nimon.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Curiosity - Rover's Second Scoop Discarded, Third Scoop Commanded

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) patch.

Oct. 17, 2012

This image contributed to an interpretation by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity science team that some of the bright particles on the ground near the rover are native Martian material. Other light-toned material nearby (see PIA16230) has been assessed as small debris from the spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

 Commands will be sent to Curiosity today instructing the rover to collect a third scoop of soil from the "Rocknest" site of windblown Martian sand and dust. Pending evaluation of this Sol 69 (Oct. 15, 2012) scooping, a sample from the scoopful is planned as the first sample for delivery -- later this week -- to one of the rover's internal analytical instruments, the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. A later scoopful will become the first solid sample for delivery to the rover's other internal analytical instrument, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.

This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows a small bright object on the ground beside the rover at the "Rocknest" site. The object is just below the center of this image. It is about half an inch (1.3 centimeters) long. The rover team has assessed this object as debris from the spacecraft, possibly from the events of landing on Mars. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

The rover's second scoopful, collected on Sol 66 (Oct. 12), was intentionally discarded on Sol 67 due to concern about particles of bright material seen in the hole dug by the scooping. Other small pieces of bright material in the Rocknest area have been assessed as debris from the spacecraft. The science team did not want to put spacecraft material into the rover's sample-processing mechanisms. Confidence for going ahead with the third scooping was based on new assessment that other bright particles in the area are native Martian material. One factor in that consideration is seeing some bright particles embedded in clods of Martian soil. Further investigations of the bright particles are planned, including some imaging in the Sol 69 plan.

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Sol 69, in Mars local mean solar time at Gale Crater, will end at 5:01 a.m. Oct. 16, PDT (8:01 a.m., EDT).

  Here's the Scoop!

Video above: Curiosity shakes up a scoopful of dirt, dusts off the sampling system and investigates a shiny object on the surface of Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Curiosity's latest images are available at: http://1.usa.gov/MfiyD0

For more about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mars and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / JPL / Guy Webster.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Radioactive decay of titanium powers supernova remnant

ESA - Integral Mission patch.

17 October 2012

The first direct detection of radioactive titanium associated with supernova remnant 1987A has been made by ESA’s Integral space observatory. The radioactive decay has likely been powering the glowing remnant around the exploded star for the last 20 years.

ESA’s Integral space observatory in orbit

Stars are like nuclear furnaces, continuously fusing hydrogen into helium in their cores. When stars greater than eight times the mass of our Sun exhaust their hydrogen fuel, the star collapses. This may generate temperatures high enough to create much heavier elements by fusion, such as titanium, iron, cobalt and nickel.

After the collapse, the star rebounds and a spectacular supernova explosion results, with these constituent elements flung into space.

 Supernova remnant 1987A

Supernovae can shine as brightly as entire galaxies for a very brief time thanks to the enormous amount of energy released in the explosion.

After the initial flash has faded, the total luminosity of the remnant is provided by the release of energy from the natural decay of radioactive elements produced in the explosion.

Each element emits energy at some characteristic wavelengths as it decays, providing insight into the chemical composition of the supernova ejecta – the shells of material flung out by the exploding star. 

Supernova 1987A, located in one of the Milky Way’s nearby satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud, was close enough to be seen by the naked eye when its light first reached Earth in February 1987.

Ti-44 detection in SNR 1987A

During the peak of the explosion, fingerprints of elements from oxygen to calcium were detected, representing the outer layers of the ejecta.

Soon after, signatures of the material synthesised in the inner layers could be seen in the radioactive decay of nickel-56 to cobalt-56, and its subsequent decay to iron-56.

Now, thanks to more than 1000 hours of observation by Integral, high-energy X-rays from radioactive titanium-44 in supernova remnant 1987A have been detected for the first time.

“This is the first firm evidence of titanium-44 production in supernova 1987A and in an amount sufficient to have powered the remnant over the last 20 years,” says Sergei Grebenev from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, and the first author of the paper reporting the results in Nature.

From their analysis of the data, the astronomers estimated that the total mass of titanium-44 that must have been produced just after the core collapse of SN1987A’s progenitor star amounted to 0.03% of the mass of our own Sun.

Searching for Ti-44

This value is near the upper boundary of theoretical predictions and is nearly twice the amount seen in supernova remnant Cas A, the only other remnant where titanium-44 has been detected.

“The high values of titanium-44 measured in Cas A and SNR1987A are likely produced in exceptional cases, favouring supernovae with an asymmetric geometry, and perhaps at the expense of the synthesis of heavier elements,” says Dr Grebenev.

“This is a unique scientific result obtained by Integral that represents a new constraint to be taken into account in future simulations for supernova explosions,” adds Chris Winkler, ESA’s Integral project scientist and co-author of the Nature paper.

“These observations are broadening our understanding of the processes involved during final stages of a massive star’s life.”

Link:

Integral in depth: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=21

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/ Integral / IBIS–ISGRI / S. Grebenev et al. / Hubble & NASA.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

CERN - A summer of (physics) code

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

16 October 2012

 Servers at the CERN Data Centrre (Image: CERN)

Anyone in the world with a computer can contribute to research at CERN. Through the LHC@Home project, volunteers can offer up spare computing power to simulate and process collisions happening inside the Large Hadron Collider.

CERN LHC - To discover the secrets of the Universe

CERN recently improved the program with a new feature that helps scientists monitor the system that distributes work among volunteers’ computers. But the new feature is not the work of a CERN employee; it is the work of a college undergraduate who had the chance to work with CERN through the 2012 Google Summer of Code.

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States.

Read more:

Symmetry breaking: A summer of (physics code): http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/october-2012/a-summer-of-physics-code

Related links:

LHC@Home project: http://lhcathome.web.cern.ch/LHCathome/

Large Hadron Collider: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/HowLHC-en.html

2012 Google Summer of Code: http://code.google.com/soc/

Images, Text, Credit: CERN.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Planet Found in Nearest Star System to Earth

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo.

16 October 2012

ESO’s HARPS instrument finds Earth-mass exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B

Artist’s impression of the planet around Alpha Centauri B

European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012.

Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the southern skies and is the nearest stellar system to our Solar System — only 4.3 light-years away. It is actually a triple star — a system consisting of two stars similar to the Sun orbiting close to each other, designated Alpha Centauri A and B, and a more distant and faint red component known as Proxima Centauri [1]. Since the nineteenth century astronomers have speculated about planets orbiting these bodies, the closest possible abodes for life beyond the Solar System, but searches of increasing precision had revealed nothing. Until now.

Artist’s impression of the planet around Alpha Centauri B (Annotated)

“Our observations extended over more than four years using the HARPS instrument and have revealed a tiny, but real, signal from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B every 3.2 days,” says Xavier Dumusque (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland and Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto, Portugal), lead author of the paper. “It’s an extraordinary discovery and it has pushed our technique to the limit!”

The European team detected the planet by picking up the tiny wobbles in the motion of the star Alpha Centauri B created by the gravitational pull of the orbiting planet [2]. The effect is minute — it causes the star to move back and forth by no more than 51 centimetres per second (1.8 km/hour), about the speed of a baby crawling. This is the highest precision ever achieved using this method.

Alpha Centauri in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur)

Alpha Centauri B is very similar to the Sun but slightly smaller and less bright. The newly discovered planet, with a mass of a little more than that of the Earth [3], is orbiting about six million kilometres away from the star, much closer than Mercury is to the Sun in the Solar System. The orbit of the other bright component of the double star, Alpha Centauri A, keeps it hundreds of times further away, but it would still be a very brilliant object in the planet’s skies.

The bright star Alpha Centauri and its surroundings

The first exoplanet around a Sun-like star was found by the same team back in 1995 and since then there have been more than 800 confirmed discoveries, but most are much bigger than the Earth, and many are as big as Jupiter [4]. The challenge astronomers now face is to detect and characterise a planet of mass comparable to the Earth that is orbiting in the habitable zone [5] around another star. The first step has now been taken [6].

A journey to Alpha Centauri

“This is the first planet with a mass similar to Earth ever found around a star like the Sun. Its orbit is very close to its star and it must be much too hot for life as we know it,” adds Stéphane Udry (Geneva Observatory), a co-author of the paper and member of the team, “but it may well be just one planet in a system of several. Our other HARPS results, and new findings from Kepler, both show clearly that the majority of low-mass planets are found in such systems.”

“This result represents a major step towards the detection of a twin Earth in the immediate vicinity of the Sun. We live in exciting times!” concludes Xavier Dumusque.

A fly-through of the Alpha Centauri system

ESO will hold an online press conference offering journalists the opportunity to discuss the result and its impact with the scientists. To participate please read our media advisory.

Notes:

[1] The components of a multiple star are named by adding uppercase letters to the name of the star. Alpha Centauri A is the brightest component, Alpha Centauri B is the slightly fainter second star and Alpha Centauri C is the much fainter Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri is slightly closer to Earth than A or B and hence is formally the closest star.

[2] HARPS measures the radial velocity of a star — its speed towards or away from the Earth — with extraordinary precision. A planet in orbit around a star causes the star to regularly move towards and away from a distant observer on Earth. Due to the Doppler effect, this radial velocity change induces a shift of the star’s spectrum towards longer wavelengths as it moves away (called a redshift) and a blueshift (towards shorter wavelengths) as it approaches. This tiny shift of the star’s spectrum can be measured with a high-precision spectrograph such as HARPS and used to infer the presence of a planet.

[3] Using the radial velocity method, astronomers can only estimate a minimum mass for a planet as the mass estimate also depends on the tilt of the orbital plane relative to the line of sight, which is unknown. But, from a statistical point of view, this minimum mass is often close to the real mass of the planet.

[4] NASA’s Kepler mission has found 2300 candidate planets using an alternative method — searching for the slight drop in the brightness of a star as a planet passes in front of it (transits) and blocks some of the light. The majority of planet candidates detected by this transit method are very distant from us. But, in contrast, the planets found by HARPS are around stars close to the Sun — with the new discovery being the closest yet. This makes them better targets for many kinds of additional follow-up observations such as characterising the planet’s atmosphere.

[5] The habitable zone is a narrow annular region around a star in which water may be present in liquid form if conditions are right.

[6] ESPRESSO, the Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations, is to be installed on the ESO Very Large Telescope. Currently undergoing final design, it is scheduled to start operating in late-2016 or early-2017. ESPRESSO will feature radial velocity precision of 0.35 km/hour or less. For comparison, Earth induces a 0.32 km/hour radial velocity on the Sun. This resolution should thus enable ESPRESSO to discover Earth-mass planets in the habitable zone. The ESPRESSO consortium is led by team members responsible for the current discovery.

More information:

This research was presented in a paper “An Earth mass planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B”, to appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012.

The team is composed of Xavier Dumusque (Observatoire de Genève, Switzerland; Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto, Portugal), Francesco Pepe (Observatoire de Genève), Christophe Lovis (Observatoire de Genève), Damien Ségransan (Observatoire de Genève), Johannes Sahlmann (Observatoire de Genève), Willy Benz (Universität Bern, Switzerland), François Bouchy (Observatoire de Genève; Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, France), Michel Mayor (Observatoire de Genève), Didier Queloz (Observatoire de Genève), Nuno Santos (Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto) and Stéphane Udry (Observatoire de Genève).

The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning the 39-metre European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

Links:

    Research paper in Nature: http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1241/eso1241a.pdf

    Photos of HARPS: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/search/?adv=&subject_name=HARPS

    Photos of La Silla Observatory: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/lasilla/

Images, Text, Credits: ESO / Richard Hook, L. Calçada / IAU and Sky & Telescope / Digitized Sky Survey 2, Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin / Observatoire de l’Université de Genève, Xavier Dumusque, Stéphane Udry, Francesco Pepe, Damien Ségransan / Center for Space and Habitability (Bern), Willy Benz / Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto, Nuno Santos / Videos: ESO./L. Calçada/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org).

Best regards, Orbiter.ch