VLT – Slugger O'Toole

“Currently the number of exoplanets stands at close to 600…”

Pete Baker on September 15, 2011, 4:32 pm | Readers 17

[Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser]. As the BBC reported, astronomers using the HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6-metre telescope at the European Southern Observatory [ESO]’s La Silla Observatory in Chile recently announced the discovery of more than 50 new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, including sixteen super-Earths. It’s the subject of ESOcast 35: 50 New Exoplanets. From the ESO science release In the eight years since it started surveying stars like the Sun using the radial velocity technique HARPS has been used to discover more …

Most distant “angry monster” brightest in early Universe

Pete Baker on June 30, 2011, 4:32 pm | Readers 21

[Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser] The BBC reports on the discovery of the most distant quasar yet seen, ULAS J1120+0641. An “angry monster” 12.9 billion light-years away – a mere 770 million years after the Big Bang. Before the process of re-ionization was completed. As the BBC report notes The light from ULAS J1120+0641 displays the characteristic signature of neutral gas, indicating that, at 770 million years after the Big Bang, the process of re-ionization had some way to go before the process was …

Clearing the cosmic fog

Pete Baker on October 21, 2010, 8:13 pm | Readers 12

As the BBC noted, astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope [VLT] have confirmed that galaxy UDFy-38135539, one of several candidates identified in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) image of the Fornax Constellation acquired with the telescope’s new Wide Field Camera 3 last year, is the most distant galaxy ever detected. [Image credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick Observatory and University of California, Santa Cruz) and the HUDF09 Team] Spectroscopic analysis of data collected during a 16 hour observation using the VLT identified a red shift …

ESO’s VLT provides first 3-D image of supernova remnant

Pete Baker on August 5, 2010, 4:31 pm | Readers 308

As the BBC notes, having already observed the most massive star ever discovered ESO’s Very Large Telescope array [VLT] in Chile has now provided the first 3-D image of a supernova remnant. The first video is an artist’s impression of the material around recently exploded star, known as Supernova 1987A [SN 1987A]. Credit ESO/L. Calçada. From the ESO press release Unlike the Sun, which will die rather quietly, massive stars arriving at the end of their brief life explode as supernovae, hurling out …

More telescopes…

Pete Baker on June 12, 2010, 3:23 pm | Readers 3

As the BBC notes, for the first time astronomers have directly observed the orbit of an exo-planet – Beta Pictoris b, a gas giant about nine times the mass of Jupiter, some 60 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Pictar. The team used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. [Image credit: ESO] Only 12 million years old, or less than three-thousandths of the age of the Sun, Beta Pictoris is 75% more massive than our parent …