Press Releases

18 December 2008 - ESO
ALMA observatory equipped with its first antenna
High in the Atacama region in northern Chile, one of the world's most advanced telescopes has just passed a major milestone. The first of many state-of-the-art antennas has just been handed over to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) project. ALMA is under construction on the plateau of Chajnantor, at an altitude of 5000 m. The telescope is being built by a global partnership, including ESO as the European partner.

12 December 2008 - EMBL
Leica Microsystems to Become Founder Partner of EMBL Advanced Training Centre
Microscope designer Leica Microsystems and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) signed a corporate partnership agreement today whereby Leica Microsystems becomes a founder partner of the EMBL Advanced Training Centre scheduled to be completed in September 2009.

12 December 2008 - CERN
CERN Council rings the changes
The CERN Council today thanked the Organization's outgoing management, and welcomed in the new.

5 December 2008 - CERN
LHC to restart in 2009
CERN today confirmed that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will restart in 2009. This news forms part of an updated report, published today, on the status of the LHC following a malfunction on 19 September.

5 December 2008 - ESA
ESA presents European participants in Mars500 isolation study
March 2009 will see two European participants entering a set of modules at the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow. Together with four Russian participants, they will be sealed inside these isolation chambers for 105 days. This joint ESA IBMP campaign is a preparatory study leading up to the 520-day isolation study in the form of a full-fledged simulation of a mission to Mars that is due to start end-2009.

4 December 2008 - ESO
Students Discover Unique Planet
Three undergraduate students, from Leiden University in the Netherlands, have discovered an extrasolar planet. The extraordinary find, which turned up during their research project, is about five times as massive as Jupiter. This is also the first planet discovered orbiting a fast-rotating hot star.

3 December 2008 - EMBL
Picture Release
Apart from being crucial for biology, cell division is also a very beautiful process as these images taken by Joël Beaudoin in the group of Jan Ellenberg at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) show.

2 December 2008 - ESO
Omega Centauri - the glittering giant of the southern skies
Omega Centauri is one of the finest jewels of the southern hemisphere night sky, as ESO's latest stunning image beautifully illustrates. Containing millions of stars, this globular cluster is located roughly 17 000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus.