Science With The VLT
Results from the VLT have led to the publication of an average of more than one peer-reviewed scientific paper per day. For instance in 2007, almost 500 refereed scientific papers were published based on VLT data. The telescope's scientific discoveries include imaging an extrasolar planet for the first time, tracking individual stars moving around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, and observing the afterglow of the furthest known gamma-ray burst.
Other discoveries with VLT's signature include the detection of carbon monoxide molecules in a galaxy located almost 11 billion light-years away for the first time, a feat that had remained elusive for 25 years. This has allowed astronomers to obtain the most precise measurement of the cosmic temperature at such a remote epoch. Another important study was that of the violent flares from the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The VLT and APEX teamed up to reveal material being stretched out as it orbits in the intense gravity close to the central black hole.
Using the VLT, astronomers have also measured the age of the oldest star known in our galaxy, the Milky Way. At 13.2 billion years old, the star was born in the earliest era of star formation in the Universe. They have also analysed the atmosphere around a super-Earth exoplanet for the first time using the VLT. The planet, which is known as GJ 1214b, was studied as it passed in front of its parent star and some of the starlight passed through the planet’s atmosphere.
In all, of the top 10 discoveries done at ESO's observatories, seven made use of the VLT.
Read more about this topic: Very Large Telescope
Famous quotes containing the words science with and/or science:
“Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,—not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,—and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars:
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer,
For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)