Annual Report 2016 ESO
ESO European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere Annual Report 2016 ESO European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere Annual Report 2016 Presented to the Council by the Director General Tim de Zeeuw The European Southern Observatory P. Horálek/ESO P. ESO, the European Southern Observa tory, ofChile:La Silla,ParanalandChajnantor. The four Unit Telescopes (UTs) of the Very Large is the foremost intergovernmental astron- La Silla,located2400metresabovesea Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. omy organisation in Europe. It is sup- level and 600 kilometres north of Santiago ported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, deChile,wasESO’sfirstsite.Itis Pacificcoastinoneofthedriestareasin Brazil 1, the Czech Republic, Denmark, equipped with several optical telescopes theworld.Scientificoperationsbeganin France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the with mirror diameters of up to 3.6 metres. 1999 and have resulted in many extreme- Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, ly successful research programmes. Sweden, Switzerland and the United The 3.5-metre New Technology Tele- Kingdom. Several other countries have scope (NTT) broke new ground in the The VLT is a most unusual telescope expressed an interest in membership. 1980sandwasthefirstintheworld and arguably the world’s most advanced to have a computer-controlled main mir- optical instrument. It is not just one tele- Created in 1962, ESO carries out an ror, a technology developed at ESO and scope, but an array of four, each with a ambitious programme focused on the now applied to most of the world’s cur- main mirror 8.2 metres in diameter.
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