Recent Scientific Achievements
The ESO 3.6m telescope has made several scientific discoveries since it saw first light. Recent astronomical achievements were made possible by HARPS, a "top-class" instrument. This include finding the lightest exoplanet known at the time of discovery in, Gliese 581e, with only twice the mass of the Earth, and the richest planetary system known at the time, with up to seven planets orbiting a Sun-like star.
The telescope was also involved in solving a decades-old mystery regarding the mass of Cepheid variable stars. By using the HARPS instrument, astronomers detected for the first time a double star where a pulsating Cepheid variable and another star pass in front of one another, which allows to measure the mass of the Cepheid. The study concluded that the mass prediction coming from the theory of stellar pulsation was correct while the value calculated was at odds with the theory of stellar evolution.
The discovery of the extrasolar planet Gliese 581 c by the team of Stéphane Udry at University of Geneva's Observatory in Switzerland was announced on April 24, 2007. The team used the HARPS instrument (an echelle spectrograph) on the European Southern Observatory ESO 3.6 m Telescope in La Silla, Chile, and employed the radial velocity technique to identify the planet's influence on the star.
By 2009, the telescope was used to discover 75 exoplanet candidates. In 2011, another 50 exoplanet candidates were announced.
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