ESO's Observing Sites in Chile
While ESO's headquarters are located in Germany, all of its telescopes and observatories are in the north of Chile, where the organisation operates some of the world's largest and most advanced ground-based astronomical facilities:
- La Silla, which hosts the New Technology Telescope,
- Paranal, where the Very Large Telescope is located,
- Llano de Chajnantor, which hosts the APEX (Atacama Pathfinder Experiment) submillimetre telescope and where ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is currently under construction.
These are among the best locations for astronomical observations in the southern hemisphere.
One of the most ambitious ESO projects is the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), a 40-metre-class telescope based on an innovative 5-mirror design, following the concept of the formerly planned Overwhelmingly Large Telescope. The E-ELT will be the largest optical/near-infrared telescope in the world. ESO started the design phase of this telescope in early 2006 and aims to begin constructing it in 2012. As decided by the ESO Council on the 26th of April 2010, a fourth site, Cerro Armazones, is to be the home of E-ELT.
Each year, about 2000 proposals are made for the use of ESO telescopes, requesting between four and six times more nights than are available. The science done with these instruments annually results in a significant number of peer-reviewed publications. In 2009 alone, more than 650 refereed papers based on ESO data were published.
| ESO Telescopes | |||||||
| Name | Size | Type | Location | Began Operations | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Very Large Telescope (VLT) | 4 x 8.2 m + 4 x 1.8 m | optical, near- and mid-infrared telescope array | Paranal | 1998 | |||
| New Technology Telescope (NTT) | 3.58 m | optical and infrared telescope | La Silla | 1989 | |||
| ESO 3.6 m telescope | 3.57 m | optical and infrared telescope | La Silla | 1977 | |||
| MPG/ESO 2.2 m telescope | 2.20 m | optical and infrared telescope | La Silla | 1984 | |||
| Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) | 12 m | millimetre-/submillimetre-wavelength telescope | Chajnantor | 2005 | |||
| Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) | 50 x 12 m, and 12 × 7 m + 4 x 12 m (ACA) | millimetre-/submillimetre-wavelength interferometer array telescope | Chajnantor | 2011 | |||
| Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) | 4.1 m | near-infrared survey telescope | Paranal | 2009 | |||
| VLT Survey Telescope (VST) | 2.6 m | optical survey telescope | Paranal | 2011 | |||
| European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) | 39.3 m | optical to mid-infrared telescope | Cerro Armazones (in detailed design phase) | TBD | |||
ESO's telescopes generate vast amounts of data at a high rate, which are stored in a permanent Science Archive Facility at ESO's headquarters. The archive now contains more than 1.5 million images or spectra with a total volume of about 65 terabytes (65,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data.
Additional ESO research facilities are located in Santiago, Chile. The space includes a library, computing resources, and programmes for visiting scientists. ESO also maintains close ties with other observatories and universities throughout the country.
Read more about this topic: European Southern Observatory
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