European Southern Observatory

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is an international astronomical organisation, composed and supported by ten countries from the European Union plus Switzerland and was created in 1962. It is famous for discovering a candidate to be farthest galaxy ever seen by humans, the Abell 1835 IR1916 galaxy, though this claim seems to be debunked by a series of new articles. In 2005, it obtained the first picture of an exosolar planet, 2M1207b, orbiting a brown dwarf 260 light-years away.

Instruments at Paranal

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is the main instrument, composed of four near-identical 8.2 m telescopes. In addition the four main telescopes can combine their light to make a fifth instrument, the VLTI, Very Large Telescope Interferometer. Four auxiliary telescopes of 1.8m each are being added to the VLTI to make it available when the main telescopes are being used for other projects. The first two of these were installed in early 2004 and 2005.

Related Topics:
Very Large Telescope - Interferometer

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The site also houses the 2.5m VLT Survey Telescope and 4m VISTA survey telescope with wider fields of view for surveying large areas of sky uniformly.

Related Topics:
VLT Survey Telescope - VISTA

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