Press Releases 1997

11 June 1997: This new and very detailed image of the famous circumstellar disk around the southern star Beta Pictoris was obtained with the ESO ADONIS adaptive optics system at the 3.6-m telescope and the Observatoire de Grenoble coronograph. It shows (in false colours) the scattered light at wavelength 1.25 micron (J band) and is one of the best images of this interesting feature obtained so far.

2 June 1997: Hans Hermann Heyer, professional ESO photographer at the Education and Public Relations Department in Garching, has prepared a remarkable exhibition of 45 photographs he obtained during two visits to ESO-Chile in 1996. It is on display at the ESO Headquarters until July 10, 1997.

2 June 1997: The installation of the ESO Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in the Chilean Atacama desert is proceeding rapidly. The moment of first light of the first 8.2-metre telescope is getting closer and activities in Paranal and at the ESO Headquarters in Garching are becoming ever more intense.

16 May 1997: In August 1995, the European Southern Observatory signed a contract with Linde A.G. (Germany), for the supply of the coating unit for the giant mirrors of the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). Together with the main subcontractors, BOC coating technology (UK) , and Deggendorfer Werft (Germany), Linde has meanwhile completed the development, construction and pre-commissioning of the coating unit in Deggendorf, a town located at the Danube River, some 150 km northeast of Munich.

12 May 1997: ESO Messenger no. 87 (March 1997) contains information (on Page 5) about the content of the Time Capsule, deposited by President Frei of the Republic of Chile on December 4, 1996, in the wall of VLT Enclosure no. 1. This capsule, an aluminium cylinder of 15 cm diameter and 45 centimeter long, was filled with nitrogen gas and sealed hermetically. A commemorative plaque was fixed in front of the cavity. In addition to the various items listed below, the capsule also contains a list of contents etched on a metal plate which will survive virtually indefinitely in this environment, while it cannot be excluded that the papers may deteriorate with time.

28 April 1997: Brown Dwarfs are star-like objects which are too small to become real stars, yet too large to be real planets. Their mass is too small to ignite those nuclear processes which are responsible for the large energies and high temperatures of stars, but it is much larger than that of the planets we know in our solar system. Until now, very few Brown Dwarfs have been securely identified as such. Two are members of double-star systems, and a few more are located deep within the Pleiades star cluster. Now, however, Maria Teresa Ruiz of the Astronomy Department at Universidad de Chile (Santiago de Chile), using telescopes at the ESO La Silla observatory, has just discovered one that is all alone and apparently quite near to us. Contrary to the others which are influenced by other objects in their immediate surroundings, this new Brown Dwarf is unaffected and will thus be a perfect object for further investigations that may finally allow us to better understand these very interesting celestial bodies. It has been suggested that Brown Dwarfs may constitute a substantial part of the unseen dark matter in our Galaxy. This discovery may therefore also have important implications for this highly relevant research area.

9 April 1997: Circumstellar disks of gas and dust play a crucial role in the formation of stars and planets. Until now, high-resolution images of such disks around young stars within the Orion Nebula obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) constituted the most direct proof of their existence. Now, another circumstellar disk has been detected around a star in the Lagoon Nebula - also known as Messier 8 (M8) , a giant complex of interstellar gas and dust with many young stars in the southern constellation of Sagittarius and four times more distant than the Orion Nebula. The observations were carried out by an international team of scientists led by Bringfried Stecklum (Thüringer Landessternwarte, Tautenburg, Germany) [1] who used telescopes located at the ESO La Silla observatory and also observations from the HST archive. These new results are paving the road towards exciting research programmes on star formation which will become possible with the ESO Very Large Telescope.

20 March 1997: These photos show one of the three generating sets (08a/97 and 08b/97) that will constitute the electric power station of the ESO Paranal Observatory of the Very Large Telescope Observatory (VLT).

11 March 1997: An international team of astronomers has used large telescopes in Chile and Australia to measure the biggest star in the sky. The star, designated R Doradus , is of the so-called red giant type and is located in the southern constellation of Dorado. Its apparent diameter (i.e., the size which the star appears to have when seen from the Earth) is larger than any other so far observed, except for the Sun. In particular, it exceeds by more than 30% that of Betelgeuse , which for the past 75 years has held the title of star with the largest apparent size.

5 March 1997: In the afternoon of March 9, 1997, the Bavarian Prime Minister, Dr. Edmund Stoiber, on the invitation of the Director General of ESO, Professor Riccardo Giacconi, visited the ESO La Silla Observatory, located in an isolated area in the Atacama desert some 600 km north of the Chilean capital.

28 February 1997: This week astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have tested a novel approach of doing astronomy from the ground. Inaugurating a new era, the ESO 3.5-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) at La Silla successfully performed a series of observations under automatic control by advanced computer software developed by the ESO Data Management Division (DMD) for use with the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). This move has been made necessary by technological improvements in telescopes and the increasing competition among scientists for these valuable resources.

15 January 1997: Recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have documented an unexpected and rapid, seven-fold brightening of an unusual double star at the centre of the impressive 47 Tucanae globular cluster in the southern sky. This is the first HST observation of such a rare phenomenon. The astronomers [1] who are involved in this observational program find that this event cannot be explained by any of the common processes known to occur in such stars.

14 January 1997: The following success story is a classical illustration of scientific progress through concerted interplay of observation and theory. It concerns a 35-year old mystery which has now been solved by means of exciting observations of a strange double star. An added touch is the successive involvement of astronomers connected to the European Southern Observatory.

9 January 1997: This impressive nocturnal image of Cerro Paranal, the site of the ESO VLT Observatory, inaugurates the series of ESO Press Photos in 1997, a decisive year for the Very Large Telescope Project. Only one year now remains until first light will be obtained with the first of the giant 8.2-metre telescopes in the VLT array. Recent daytime aerial photos of Paranal are available as ESO Press Photos 40a+b/96.