European Southern Observatory - History

History

The idea that European astronomers should establish a common large observatory arose at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands in the spring of 1953 between Walter Baade and Jan Oort. It was quickly followed up by Oort who, on the 21 June the same year, gathered a group of astronomers in Leiden to consider it. Immediately thereafter, the subject was further discussed at the Groningen conference, also in the Netherlands. On 26 January 1954, an ESO declaration was signed by leading astronomers from six European countries expressing the wish that a joint European observatory be established in the southern hemisphere.

The choice of the southern hemisphere resulted from the need to observe the southern sky. At the time, all reflector telescopes with an aperture of 2 metres or more were located in the northern hemisphere. In addition, some of the most interesting objects of research, such as the central parts of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds, were accessible only from the southern hemisphere. The telescopes were to be set up in South Africa, where several European observatories were located, but it was discovered (after testing observing conditions over the years of 1955 to 1963) that the Andes were preferable. On 15 November 1963, Chile was chosen as the site for ESO's observatory.

This decision was preceded by the ESO Convention, which was signed on 5 October 1962 by Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Sweden, and by the nomination (on 1 November 1962) of Otto Heckmann as the first Director General of the organisation. A first proposal for the Convention, between astronomy organisations in these five countries, was drafted in 1954. Although some amendments were made in the initial document, the matter of the Convention proceeded slowly until 1960, when it came into focus in that year's Committee meeting. The new draft was discussed in detail and one of the members, Bannier (who was also a member of the Council of CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research), highlighted the need to have a Convention between governments and not only between organisations.

The matter of the Convention, and the involvement of governments in it, became pressing because the costs of site testing expeditions were rising sharply. The final 1962 text was largely adopted from the CERN Convention because of the similarities between the two organisations and because some of the members of the ESO Council were also members of the Council of CERN.

In 1966, the first of ESO's telescopes at the La Silla site in Chile began operating. Because CERN, like ESO, developed powerful and sophisticated instrumentation, the astronomy organisation frequently turned to the nuclear research body for informal consultation. Eventually, a collaborative agreement between ESO and CERN was signed in 1970. A few months after, ESO's Telescope Division had established itself in a CERN building in Geneva. ESO's Sky Atlas Laboratory was also established on CERN premises. ESO's European departments moved into the new ESO Headquarters in Garching near Munich, Germany in 1980.