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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Atlantic/Canary:20140430T120000
DTEND;TZID=Atlantic/Canary:20140430T130000
UID:iactalks-631
X-WR-CALNAME: IAC Talks: Open Astronomy Seminars
X-ORIGINAL-URL: /iactalks/Talks/view/631
CREATED:2014-04-30T12:00:00+01:00
X-WR-CALDESC: IAC Talks upcomming talks
SUMMARY:ESO: present and future
DESCRIPTION:ESO: present and future\nProf. Tim de Zeeuw\n\nESO is an interg
 overnmental organization for astronomy founded in 1962 by five countries. 
 It currently has 14 Member States in Europe with Brazil poised to join as 
 soon as the Accession Agreement has been ratified. Together these countrie
 s represent approximately 30 percent of the world’s astronomers. ESO
  operates optical/infrared observatories on La Silla and Paranal in Chile,
  partners in the sub-millimeter radio observatories APEX and ALMA on Chajn
 antor and is about to start construction of the Extremely Large Telescope 
 on Armazones.\nLa Silla hosts various robotic telescopes and experiments a
 s well as the NTT and the venerable 3.6m telescope. The former had a key r
 ole in the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe and the
  latter hosts the ultra-stable spectrograph HARPS which is responsible for
  the discovery of nearly two-thirds of all confirmed exoplanets with masse
 s below that of Neptune. On Paranal the four 8.2m units of the Very Large 
 Telescope, the Interferometer and the survey telescopes VISTA and VST toge
 ther constitute an integrated system which supports 16 powerful facility i
 nstruments, including adaptive-optics-assisted imagers and integral-field 
 spectrographs, with half a dozen more on the way and the Extremely Large T
 elescope with its suite of instruments to be added to this system in about
  ten years time. Scientific highlights include the characterisation of the
  supermassive black hole in the Galactic Centre, the first image of an exo
 planet, studies of gamma-ray bursts enabled by the Rapid Response Mode and
  milliarcsec imaging of evolved stars and active galactic nuclei. The sing
 le dish APEX antenna, equipped with spectrometers and wide-field cameras, 
 contributes strongly to the study of high-redshift galaxies and of star- a
 nd planet-formation. Early Science results obtained with the ALMA interfer
 ometer already demonstrate its tremendous potential for observations of th
 e cold Universe.
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