2018 ESO Media Highlights

In Futura Sciences’ “Astronomy: Ten news items that marked 2018”, first place goes to the confirmation by ESO’s incredibly sensitive GRAVITY instrument that a supermassive black hole exists at the heart of the Milky Way. The discovery of a “super-Earth” planet orbiting Barnard’s Star using data from ESO’s HARPS instrument comes in fourth place.

This artist’s impression shows the path of the star S2 as it passes very close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. As it gets close to the black hole, the very strong gravitational field causes the colour of the star to become more red, an effect of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This is the first time the effects predicted by Einstein’s general relativity has been tested to this degree in the extreme gravitational field near a supermassive black hole.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

One of the largest observing campaigns carried out to date used data from a wide range of instruments including ESO’s planet-hunter HARPS to discover a dim, frozen planet around Barnard’s Star — the nearest single star to the Sun. The newly-discovered planet is the second-closest known exoplanet to Earth.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Austrian technology news site, Futurezone, also highlighted ESO’s exciting GRAVITY observations of the immediate neighbourhood of our galaxy’s central black hole in their round-up of the best science stories of 2018. But this was for a slightly different piece of research that observed clumps of gas zooming around the black hole’s event horizon.

ESO’s exquisitely sensitive GRAVITY instrument added further evidence to the long-standing assumption that a supermassive black hole lurks in the centre of the Milky Way. New observations show clumps of gas swirling around at about 30% of the speed of light on a circular orbit just outside its event horizon — the first time material has been observed orbiting close to the point of no return, and the most detailed observations yet of material orbiting this close to a black hole.

Credit: ESO/Gravity Consortium/L. Calçada

In their review of the most stunning space pictures of 2018, National Geographic shared ESO Photo Ambassador Gerd Hūdepohl's beautiful photo of the Very Large Telescope’s four laser guide stars, as well as our image of NGC 2467, the star-bearing Skull and Crossbones Nebula:

Even in the near-pristine seeing conditions over Chile, home to ESO’s fleet of world-class telescopes, turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere causes stars to twinkle, blurring our view of the night sky. These four laser beams are specially designed to combat this turbulence. They originate from the 4 Laser Guide Star Facility, a state-of-the-art component of the Adaptive Optics Facility of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), which allows astronomers to measure and correct for atmospheric distortion.

Credit: ESO/G. Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)

Active star-forming region NGC 2467 is packed with dust, gas and bright young stars. This vivid image was was captured with the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The beautiful region is nicknamed the Skull and Crossbones nebula, due to its resemblance to a grinning skull.

Credit: ESO

Space.com ended the year with a list of the most fascinating exoplanets found in 2018. The super-Earth discovered around Barnard’s Star made it to the top spot, with second place graced by the discovery of a newborn planet orbiting a dwarf star by ESO’s planet-hunter SPHERE. Coming in at number four is the detection by HARPS of a Mercury-like planet the size of the Earth, with a metal core that makes up two-thirds of its mass.

This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on the Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the act of formation. The planet is visible as a bright point to the right of the centre of the image, which is blacked out by the mask used to block the bright light from the central star. The baby planet is carving a path through the disc of gas and dust around the young star PDS 70.

Credit: ESO/A. Müller et al.

The above image of the baby planet discovered by SPHERE was also listed by the Mexican Uno TV as one of the 15 best space pictures of 2018.

Two ESO images were featured by the Belgian news site Het Laatste Nieuws as “The five most beautiful space photos of 2018”: the incandescent Skull and Crossbones nebula (NGC 2467) and the bountiful RCW 38 star-forming region.

New observations made using ESO’s Very Large Telescope showcase the ionised hydrogen region RCW 38 in all its glory. This image was taken during testing of the HAWK-I camera with the GRAAL adaptive optics system. It shows the star cluster inside RCW 38 and the surrounding clouds of brightly glowing gas in exquisite detail, with dark tendrils of dust threading through the bright core of this young gathering of stars.

Credit: ESO/K. Muzic

Wikipedia’s list of 278 significant science events in 2018 highlighted three results with ESO involvement:

• 2 July: First confirmed image of a newborn planet, exoplanet PDS 70b, several times larger than Jupiter

• 24 September: Astronomers describe several possible star systems from which 'Oumuamua, an interstellar object passing through the Solar System, may have begun its journey

• 4 November: Astronomers report the discovery of GJ 699 b, a super-Earth orbiting near the snow line of Barnard's Star, just six light-years from Earth.

The national Danish Broadcasting Corporation lists ESO’s discovery of liquid water on TRAPPIST-1 planets as one of the ten most important scientific discoveries of 2018. At just 40 light-years away, the ultra-cold dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 hosts seven planets, each with their own unique properties.

A study found that the seven planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1 are all made mostly of rock, and some could potentially hold more water than Earth. The planets´ densities, now known much more precisely than before, suggest that some of them could have up to 5 percent of their mass in the form of water — about 250 times more than Earth´s oceans. The hotter planets closest to their parent star are likely to have dense steamy atmospheres and the more distant ones probably have icy surfaces.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

The discoveries made using ESO’s cutting-edge telescopes and instruments are only possible with the hard work of the scientists, engineers and other ESO staff. ESO hopes to bring you even more exciting news and beautiful images in 2019 and the years to come!