Paranal (ESO)

SPHERE, the extreme adaptive optics facility, high contrast imager spectrograph and polarimeter of the Very Large Telescope, is now offered to the community for P95 (April-Sept 2015, please look at the Call for Proposals). It has unique capabilities that make it a fantastic high-resolution, high-contrast disk imager with a field of view up to 11" (much bigger than most of its main competitors). Material is available online to help you write your proposals. SPHERE can lock its AO on fainter stars than GPI, up to R=11 for service mode and up to R~15 in visitor... read more ❯

As some would say: "the Winter is coming..." This is unusual to get such dark and threatening clouds above one of the driest place on Earth. But it's been so for two days and we just hope that no drops of rain will fall down because the Observatory is not made for rain and that's just more hassle for the staff and of course for the occasional visitors who are not getting their projects done. Tonight it got worse, the wind is blowing over 20 meters/second (45 miles/hour) and the humidity rose above 50%... read more ❯

http://www.flickr.com/photos/djulik/6264962767/ As one can see (I put notes on the flickr image, click on it) this 25-second exposure taken on October 20, 2011 contains a lot of things (the Earth's zodiacal light, the "Kiwi", the galactic center, the VLT observatory, a big heart in light painting, etc.) and it is a tribute to my wife who came to live in Chile with me so I could pursue my dream with astronomy. I stood behind my camera setup on a small tripod and fired the timer, then I drew a heart in the air using my ESO tiny key-chain Maglite®. It took... read more ❯