ESO Announcements

Leading Exoplanet Hunters Awarded Science Prize

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:00:00 +0100

World-renowned Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory have been awarded the 2011 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences for their work on exoplanets.

The foundation recognised their groundbreaking efforts in developing “new astronomical instruments and experimental techniques that led to the observation of planets outside the solar system”. These were instrumental in the first discovery of an exoplanet around a normal star, made by their team in 1995. The discovery revolutionised astronomy and initiated an entire new field that is focused on finding and characterising exoplanets. Since then, this field has been recognised by agencies and institutes around the world as one of the major challenges for astronomy in the coming decades.

Michel Mayor and his then PhD student Didier Queloz developed the radial velocity technique for planet detection, which looks for the wobble of a star caused by the gravitational pull of a planet as it orbits the star. Today, the radial velocity technique is still the most successful in finding exoplanets, and the only way to determine planetary masses. The pair also took part in developing the transit method, in which the passage of a planet in front of its star is detected by the dimming of the light received from the star.

Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz were also at the heart of a consortium, led by the Geneva Observatory with the help of ESO and other organisations, which developed the HARPS spectrograph, installed on ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile in 2003. HARPS has greatly contributed to the search for exoplanets with an impressive crop of super-Earths and Neptune-mass planets, demonstrating that a large fraction of the stars in the solar neighbourhood host low-mass planets. HARPS was described by the award jury as the “world’s leading planet discovery machine”.

The award presentation ceremony will take place on 21 June 2012.

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The jury was chaired by Theodor Hänsch, 2005 Nobel Physics laureate, Professor of Physics at LMU Munich and Director of the Department of Laser Spectroscopy at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Garching, Germany), with Avelino Corma, Research Professor in the Instituto de Tecnología Química (CSIC – Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, UPV) acting as secretary. Remaining members were Douglas Abraham, Professor of Statistical Mechanics in the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at Oxford University (United Kingdom); Ignacio Cirac, Director of the Theory Division at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Garching, Germany) and BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge laureate in Basic Sciences in the first edition of the awards; Hongkun Park, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and of Physics at Harvard University (United States); Martin Quack, Professor of Physical Chemistry at ETH Zurich (Switzerland), and Sandip Tiwari, Charles N. Mellowes Professor in Engineering at Cornell University (United States).

The BBVA Foundation promotes scientific research of excellence by funding research projects, disseminating the results to society through diverse channels including symposia, workshops, lectures, publications and exhibitions, and providing advanced training and research awards.

The Frontiers Awards honour fundamental disciplinary or supradisciplinary advances in a series of basic, natural, social and technological sciences. They seek to recognise and encourage world-class research and artistic creation, prizing contributions of broad impact for their originality and theoretical significance.

HARPS was designed and built by an international consortium of research institutes, led by the Observatoire de Genève (Switzerland) and including Observatoire de Haute-Provence (France), Physikalisches Institut der Universität Bern (Switzerland), the Service d'Aeronomie (CNRS, France), as well as ESO La Silla and ESO Garching.

The project team was directed by Michel Mayor (Principal Investigator), Didier Queloz (Mission Scientist), Francesco Pepe (Project Managers Consortium) and Gero Rupprecht (ESO representative).

Franco Pacini, 1939–2012

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:49:30 +0100

The Italian astronomer Franco Pacini, who was a key figure in the astronomy community, passed away yesterday, on 25 January 2012.

Pacini began his long-term involvement with ESO in 1975, when he joined the newly created Scientific Division, based in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1978 he moved back to Italy as Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Florence and Director of the Arcetri Observatory, which he led until the creation of INAF in 2001. He played an important role in the accession of Italy to ESO in 1982, represented Italy on the ESO Council — ESO’s governing body — and was also Council President between 1991 and 1994.

He served as President of the International Astronomical Union between 2001 and 2003, and was the founding father of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, a huge success for scientific outreach and increasing the awareness of astronomy around the world.

He will be greatly missed by ESO and by the wider astronomical community.

ESO’s Paranal Observatory Chosen as “Perfect Place” by Land Rover

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:03:00 +0100

The site of ESO’s Paranal Observatory, home of the world’s most advanced optical instrument, the Very Large Telescope (VLT), was one of the selected locations for an ad campaign entitled “Perfect Places”, recently launched worldwide by the British car maker Land Rover. The campaign presents Land Rover vehicles shot in unique places around the globe.

The combination of state-of-the art technology, cutting-edge science, a stunning environment and impressive facilities makes ESO’s Paranal Observatory a unique place in the world for scientists, engineers and visitors alike. However, ESO’s site in Chile has recently drawn the attention of Land Rover as well, as being the perfect choice for “Perfect Places”, their new print and digital media ad campaign.

Apart from being the best place for ground-based optical astronomy due to the astronomical quality of the atmosphere — characterised by the number of clear nights and the stability of the atmosphere (also known as seeing) — the Atacama Desert is also a magnificent setting for landscape photos.

A professional photography crew spent three days at Paranal taking pictures for the Land Rover publicity campaign [1]. The final ads, released worldwide with the focus on Europe and the USA, show the four-wheel-drive Range Rover in front of the Paranal Residencia, with ESO’s telescopes in the background over the mountain.

Notes

[1] Regular operations at the observatory were not affected and special care was taken by the team not to disturb the environment around the observatory.

ALMA Director Receives Instrumentation Award

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0100

The American Astronomical Society has awarded the 2012 Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation to Thijs de Graauw for his leadership in the construction of powerful new astronomical instruments including the Short Wavelength Spectrometer on the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) and the Heterodyne Instrument For the Infrared (HIFI) on the Herschel Space Observatory.

HIFI is a spectrometer placed on the European Space Agency's infrared space observatory Herschel, which was launched in May 2009. HIFI was built to look for water in a variety of celestial objects, to probe stellar environments, and to study the role of gas and dust in the formation of stars and planets, and the evolution of galaxies. Recently, thanks to HIFI, Herschel confirmed that some comets contain water similar to that on Earth, supporting the theory that Earth's water comes from comets. It also discovered cold water vapour in a disk of dust around a young star, providing more information on the role of water in the early formation of planets.

Thijs de Graauw has served as Director of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) since 2008, after also serving as Interim Director for a period during the same year. Before joining ALMA, he worked at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON), where he was responsible for the infrared and submillimetre research programme. In this capacity he acted as Principal Investigator for HIFI. He was also a professor at Leiden University, and was the Principal Investigator of the successful Short Wavelength Spectrometer (SWS), which flew on ISO, Herschel's predecessor.

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The Joseph Weber Award for Astronomical Instrumentation is awarded by the American Astronomical Society to an individual for the design, invention or significant improvement of instrumentation leading to advances in astronomy.

HIFI was designed and built by a consortium of institutes and university departments from across Europe, Canada and the USA under the leadership of the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON), Groningen, The Netherlands, and with major contributions from Germany, France and the USA.

SWS was built by SRON in collaboration with the the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

ALMA is a global partnership between Europe, North America and East Asia, in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

Black Hole Scientists Receive Prestigious Science Prize

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:50:00 +0100

Earlier today, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2012 Crafoord Prize in Astronomy to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for their separate work on proving the existence of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.

German astronomer Reinhard Genzel is director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, located in Garching on the same campus as ESO’s headquarters. His team has been involved in an unprecedented 20-year-long study of the movement of stars around the galactic centre, which is based on observations made with ESO’s New Technology Telescope at La Silla as well as ESO’s Very Large Telescope on Paranal.

The tracking of the orbits of these stars over many years has enabled astronomers to provide the strongest evidence yet of the presence of a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, as evidenced by the tight orbits of the stars due to the powerful gravitational forces near the black hole.

Recently, they discovered a cloud of gas falling at vertiginous speed towards the black hole. For the first time, the astronomers have been able to see it become increasingly distorted by pressure and tidal forces, before it is totally ripped apart.

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The Prize award ceremony will be held in Lund on 15 May 2012. The Prize symposia in mathematics and in astronomy will take place on 14 May 2012, and the Prize lectures on 15 May 2012.

The Crafoord Prize is an annual science prize. It is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is intended to promote international basic research in the fields of Astronomy and Mathematics, Geosciences and Biosciences. These disciplines are chosen so as to complement those for which the Nobel Prizes are awarded.

Educational App with ESO Content in New York Times Top 10 Best iPad Apps

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:00:00 +0100

The New York Times has included the Back in Time app developed by the company Landka among its Top 10 iPad apps in 2011. ESO went into partnership with Landka to deliver content for this educational app, which is an animated history e-book that guides the reader through time from the first moments of the Universe’s history until the most recent events. ESO contributed images and animations for the first four chapters: The Big Bang, The First Stars, The Milky Way and The Solar System.

According to The New York Times: “The coolest history textbook you’ll find on the iPad, Back in Time tells the story of the Universe using a 24-hour clock, where the Big Bang starts the day and humans appear in the final seconds.”

An intuitive interface allows the user to scroll quickly through time, entering any major event in the history of our civilisation. Each event is documented with social and historical context, images, a timeline and a section devoted to little-known, but interesting facts. The nomination text recommends that, “The text is best suited to older children and adults, but it makes for great browsing for younger children too, and the subtly moving graphics provide a compelling backdrop.”

Supported in five different languages, the application is available worldwide on Apple’s App Store. A trailer for the app is available here.

Those who wish to access ESO’s best astronomical images, can also download ESO’s free app Top 100 Images.

ESOcast 40: Nobel Prize for Accelerating Universe Discovery

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:30:29 +0100

This episode of the ESOcast looks at one of the key discoveries in physics made by astronomers in the past two decades: that our Universe is not only expanding, but that this expansion is also speeding up.

Observations from ESO’s telescopes in Chile played a significant role in this revolutionary discovery, and scientists Saul Perlmutter (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, USA), Brian P. Schmidt (Australian National University), and Adam G. Riess (STScI, Baltimore, USA) were awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for the find. Two of the follow-up projects were led by ESO staff members, Chris Lidman and Bruno Leibundgut, and other ESO staff members, Isobel Hook and Jason Spyromilio, were contributors to crucial papers.

By observing exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae, teams led by the Nobel laureates established that the expansion of the Universe was not slowing down, as had been expected in a Universe dominated by matter, but was accelerating. The acceleration is thought to be driven by dark energy, but its origin remains deeply mysterious. The discovery of the accelerating expansion led to a total revision of astronomers' view of the Universe as a whole and opened up a new world of cosmology and fundamental physics.

Watch the episode to learn more about how the astronomers made the discovery, and what it could mean for the future of the Universe.

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The ESOcast is a video podcast series dedicated to bringing you the latest news and research from ESO — the European Southern Observatory.

Subscribe to our video podcast now to keep up with the latest news from ESO: the ESOcast is available via iTunes in HD and SD. It’s also available on YouTube, Vimeo and dotSUB and is offered for download in several formats including HD.

Café & Kosmos 10 January 2012

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:00:00 +0100

with Prof. Jochen Schieck, Excellence Cluster Universe

The Standard Model of particle physics is one of the best-validated models in physics today. Nevertheless, this model fails to account for some observed phenomena, such as dark matter, or the fact that there is no longer any antimatter in the Universe. With particle accelerators, scientists are trying to recreate the conditions in the early Universe and attempt to tackle these open questions.

At Café & Kosmos on 10 January 2012, Professor Jochen Schieck (Excellence Cluster Universe) will describe two new accelerators before discussing their collision experiments: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and the new Super KEKB accelerator, which will start up in 2014, from the Japanese High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation, KEK. While the experiments at the LHC are tuned for very high energies, the physicists are adjusting the "newcomer" Super KEKB for maximum precision. Jochen Schieck will discuss with the visitors of the Café & Kosmos why both approaches are important in order to expand our understanding of physics.

Please note that the Café & Kosmos events take place in German.

What: Particle accelerators: In search of new physics
When: Tuesday, 10 January 2012, 19:00 until approximately 20:30
Where: Vereinsheim, Occamstr. 8, 80802 München, near Münchener Freiheit

Admission is free.

European Radio Astronomy Leaps into Future with RadioNet3

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:00:00 +0100

On 1 January 2012, European radio astronomy entered a new era with the implementation of RadioNet3, the third iteration of RadioNet, the European radio astronomy collaboration. As the recognised European body for radio astronomy, RadioNet aims at facilitating access to leading radio astronomy facilities around the world for European radio astronomers.

The European Commission recently secured the project by granting it 9.5 million euros for the period 2012–2015. The Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) will work with 24 European partner institutions, as well as South Korea, Australia and South Africa, to offer access to all 18 existing radio astronomy facilities in Europe. The project will also take full advantage of the APEX telescope operated by ESO, as well as the recently opened Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of which ESO is a partner, both located in Chile.

By promoting cooperation and making use of state-of-the-art facilities around the world, RadioNet3 will thus ensure European radio facilities remain competitive, and prepare European scientists and engineers for the upcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA), scheduled to start early operations in 2019.

Share Your ESO Photo Memories!

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0100

The year 2012 is ESO’s 50th anniversary. Established in 1962, ESO has evolved into a key focal point for Europe’s activities in ground-based astronomy, becoming the most productive observatory in the world, and now poised to take on a global role. Fifty years have brought many changes to ESO’s observatories, as the monthly ESO Then & Now Pictures of the Week [1] will showcase.

For those who have witnessed ESO’s historical voyage from the inside, either as members of staff or simply as visitors to our sites, we have expanded the Your ESO Pictures Flickr Group [2] to include historical images. Please share your photo memories of ESO with us and everyone else by posting these “golden oldies” to the group — whether in colour or black and white, digital or analogue! The best pictures might make it into our Pictures of the Week section, or into our Anniversary coffee-table book and movie, (and obviously credited to you).

Notes

[1] Once a month throughout 2012, a special ESO Then & Now Pictures of the Week will show how things have changed with time at the La Silla and Paranal observatory sites, the ESO offices in Santiago de Chile, and the Headquarters in Garching bei München, Germany.

[2] The Flickr group accepts photographs and videos, as well as illustrations and animations.