Comunicados de Prensa

3 de Julio de 2006: ESO's VLT has helped scientists to discover a large primordial 'blob', more than 10 billion light-years away. The most likely scenario to account for its existence and properties is that it represents the early stage in the formation of a galaxy, when gas falls onto a large clump of dark matter.

28 de Junio de 2006: Life is not easy, even for galaxies. Some indeed get so close to their neighbours that they get rather distorted. But such encounters between galaxies have another effect: they spawn new generations of stars, some of which explode. ESO's VLT has obtained a unique vista of a pair of entangled galaxies, in which a star exploded.

19 de Junio de 2006: ESO y el Gobierno de Chile lanzaron hoy el libro “10 Años Explorando el Universo”, escrito por los propios beneficiarios del Comité Mixto ESO-Chile para el desarrollo de la astronomía. Este fondo anual concursable ha otorgado más de 2,5 millones de euros (1.600 millones de pesos chilenos) para financiar becas de posdoctorado, puestos para profesores de astronomía en universidades chilenas, desarrollo de infraestructura, organización de congresos, capacitación para profesores de ciencia y programas de difusión de la astronomía para el público.

8 de Junio de 2006: The Southern constellation Tucana (the Toucan) is probably best known as the home of the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. But Tucana also hosts another famous object that shines thousands of lights, like a magnificent, oversized diamond in the sky: the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. More popularly known as 47 Tuc, it is surpassed in size and brightness by only one other globular cluster, Omega Centauri.

6 de Junio de 2006: Two new studies, based on observations made with ESO's telescopes, show that objects only a few times more massive than Jupiter are born with discs of dust and gas, the raw material for planet making. This suggests that miniature versions of the solar system may circle objects that are some 100 times less massive than our Sun.

18 de Mayo de 2006: El espectrógrafo ultra preciso HARPS del telescopio de 3,6 metros de ESO en la Silla (IV Región de Chile) descubrió un sistema planetario único, compuesto por tres planetas parecidos a Neptuno orbitando una estrella un poco menos masiva que nuestro Sol. El planeta más cercano al astro es probablemente rocoso y el más lejano es el primer exoplaneta de esta masa que reside en la zona habitable de su estrella, es decir, donde se puede encontrar agua en forma líquida.

11 de Mayo de 2006: ESO's Very Large Telescope, equipped with the multi-mode FORS instrument, took an image of NGC 3190, a galaxy so distorted that astronomers gave it two names. And as if to prove them right, in 2002 it fired off, almost simultaneously, two stellar explosions, a very rare event.

8 de Mayo de 2006: Using a quasar located 12.3 billion light-years away as a beacon, a team of astronomers detected the presence of molecular hydrogen in the farthest system ever, an otherwise invisible galaxy that we observe when the Universe was less than 1.5 billion years old, that is, about 10% of its present age. The astronomers find that there is about one hydrogen molecule for 250 hydrogen atoms. A similar set of observations for two other quasars, together with the most precise laboratory measurements, allows scientists to infer that the ratio of the proton to electron masses may have changed with time. If confirmed, this would have important consequences on our understanding of physics.

25 de Abril de 2006: El Observatorio VLT en el norte de Chile toma imágenes de un cometa que se está fragmentando. Este objeto alcanzará su distancia más cercana con la Tierra el 14 de mayo, cuando uno de los pedazos llegue a 10 millones de kilómetros de nuestro planeta. Esto es lo más cerca que un cometa ha estado de la Tierra en más de 20 años. Se espera que algunos de los fragmentos sean visibles a ojo desnudo, sin ayuda de telescopios.

14 de Abril de 2006: An image made of about 300 million pixels is being released by ESO, based on more than 64 hours of observations with the Wide-Field Camera on the 2.2m telescope at La Silla (Chile). The image covers an 'empty' region of the sky five times the size of the full moon, opening an exceptionally clear view towards the most distant part of our universe. It reveals objects that are 100 million times fainter than what the unaided eye can see.

7 de Abril de 2006: El instrumento FORS del VLT de ESO en Cerro Paranal apuntó al corazón de la famosa nebulosa de la Tarántula, también llamada NGC 2070. Lo que fotografió fue una fértil maternidad de estrellas de todos tamaños que brillan simulando un arácnido gigante.

28 de Marzo de 2006: Science is moving more rapidly than ever; one groundbreaking discovery chases the next at an incredible speed. School teachers have trouble keeping up with the pace, and many pupils call science classes "boring". Today, Europe's major research organisations launch Science in School, the first international, multidisciplinary journal for innovative science teaching, to provide a platform for communication between science teachers, practising scientists and other stakeholders in science education.

22 de Marzo de 2006: Usando el Very Large Telescope de ESO Paranal, II Región de Chile, un equipo internacional de científicos descubrió una enana café a tan solo 12, 7 años luz de la Tierra. Este objeto, entre planeta y estrella, es la tercera enana café más cercana al Sol descubierta hasta ahora. Con una temperatura de unos 750°C, es también una de las más frías, y su masa es entre 9 y 65 veces la de Júpiter. La distancia con su estrella madre es unas 4,5 veces la que separa a la Tierra del Sol.

15 de Marzo de 2006: Studying several tens of distant galaxies, an international team of astronomers found that galaxies had the same amount of dark matter relative to stars 6 billion years ago as they have now. If confirmed, this suggests a much closer interplay between dark and normal matter than previously believed. The scientists also found that as many as 4 out of 10 galaxies are out of balance. These results shed a new light on how galaxies form and evolve since the Universe was only half its current age.

28 de Febrero de 2006: Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at Cerro Paranal, Chile, and the CHARA Interferometer at Mount Wilson, California, a team of French and North American astronomers has discovered envelopes around three Cepheids, including the Pole star. This is the first time that matter is found surrounding members of this important class of rare and very luminous stars whose luminosity varies in a very regular way. Cepheids play a crucial role in cosmology, being one of the first "steps" on the cosmic distance ladder.

23 de Febrero de 2006: Possibly similar to what our own Milky Way looks like, Messier 100 [1] is a grand design spiral galaxy that presents an intricate structure, with a bright core and two prominent arms, showing numerous young and hot massive stars as well as extremely hot knots (HII regions). Two smaller arms are also seen starting from the inner part and reaching towards the larger spiral arms.

23 de Febrero de 2006: En el cielo de Paranal (II Región de Chile), donde se encuentra el Very Large Telescope de ESO, brilla ahora una nueva estrella. Por primera vez en el hemisferio sur, científicos crearon una estrella artificial, que sirve de guía para los instrumentos de observación, permitiendo corregir de manera mucho más precisa las turbulencias atmosféricas. Creada gracias a un láser, esta estrella artificial ofrece a los astrónomos una oportunidad excepcional para estudiar los detalles más finos del universo.

15 de Febrero de 2006: Astronomers, using the unique capabilities offered by the high-resolution spectrograph UVES on ESO's Very Large Telescope, have found a metal-rich hydrogen cloud in the distant universe. The result may help to solve the missing metal problem and provides insight on how galaxies form.

13 de Febrero de 2006: Today, during a ceremony in Madrid, an agreement was signed by the Spanish Minister of Education and Science, Mrs. María Jesús San Segundo, and the ESO Director General, Dr. Catherine Cesarsky, affirming their commitment to securing Spanish membership of ESO.

7 de Febrero de 2006: Based on observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope, a team of Italian astronomers reports [1] that the stellar cluster Messier 12 must have lost to our Milky Way galaxy close to one million low-mass stars.