EIROforum Organisations
ESO - European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere
ESO, the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, is an intergovernmental European organisation that was created in 1962 to . . . "establish and operate an astronomical observatory in the southern hemisphere, equipped with powerful instruments, with the aim of furthering and organizing collaboration in astronomy..." ESO is supported by fourteen countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. It is expected that others will join during the coming years.
ESO operates observational facilities at three sites. It runs the world's prime optical/infrared astronomical facility, the Very Large Telescope Array (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory. Located approximately 130 km south of Antofagasta, this 2,600 m high mountain is in the driest part of the Atacama desert. The VLT consists of four 8.2-m and four 1.8-m telescopes, some of which can be used in combination as a unique, giant interferometer (VLTI).
The beautiful multi-armed NGC 7424
that is seen almost directly face- on.
Located at a distance of roughly 40
million light-years in the
constellation Grus (the Crane), this
galaxy was discovered by Sir John
Herschel while observing at the Cape
of Good Hope.
"First Light" of the first 8.2-m telescope (UT1) occurred in May 1998 and all four giant telescopes are in operation since 2001. In addition, ESO operates the La Silla observatory in the Atacama desert, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile, at 2,400 m altitude, where state-of-the-art medium-sized telescopes are in operation. At Chajnantor, at 5100m altitude, ESO is also operating APEX, a 12-m antenna operating in the sub-millimetre domain.
More than 1,700 proposals are made each year for the use of the ESO telescopes, which contribute yearly to more than 650 scientific publications.
The ESO Headquarters are located in Garching, near Munich, Germany. This is the scientific, technical and administrative centre of ESO where technical development programmes are carried out to provide the La Silla and Paranal observatories with the most advanced instruments. There are also extensive astronomical data facilities. ESO has a total staff of about 600.
ESO is currently engaged in a major new project for the construction of 50 12-m telescopes for observation in the mm/sub-mm wavelength domain. Known as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), this is a joint project with the United States of America, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, and Spain. Furthermore, conceptual studies for an extremely large telescope, in the 30 to 60m range, are being undertaken by ESO.