The ESO 3.6 m Telescope is an optical reflecting telescope run by the European Southern Observatory at La Silla Observatory, Chile since 1977, with a clear aperture of about 3.6 meters (140 in.) and 8.6 m2 area. It received an overhaul in 1999 and a new secondary in 2004. It was one of the largest optical telescopes in the world when it was completed in the late 1970s, and has supported many advanced optical and scientific achievements. It presented one of the first Adaptive Optics system available to the astronomical community, ADONIS: ADaptive Optics Near Infrared System in the 1980s.
In 2012, it discovered a planet in the Alpha Centari system using HARPS.
Read more about ESO 3.6 M Telescope: Instruments, Recent Scientific Achievements, Contemporaries On Commissioning, The Telescope and Site, Images From Telescope
Famous quotes containing the word telescope:
“The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow, outvalues all the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)