Starship Asterisk*

http://www.eso.org/public/blog/eso-look ... -universe/
ESO, Looking at the Many Faces of the Universe
Exploring the cosmos across the electromagnetic spectrum with the many telescopes at ESO
1 September 2017
Letters from the DG

The new Director General Xavier Barcons kicks off the brand new ESOblog as he explains the importance and diversity of the many telescopes that are in operation, under construction or planned at the three ESO Sites. This collection of telescopes offers amazing views of the Universe through different parts of electromagnetic spectrum, looking at the warm, the cold and the most energetic sides of cosmos.

Greetings and welcome to the ESOblog!

Today, 1 September 2017, is my first day as the new Director General of the European Southern Observatory and also the Friday chosen for the start of a new weekly channel of communication from ESO, the ESOblog (which will contain much more than just my musings). I am very excited to be taking the helm of this world-leading astronomical organisation at such a thrilling time — a time of scientific aspirations, progress and challenges. I will be using this blog to occasionally share some of my thoughts with you as ESO continues to push into this new era of astronomical research.

http://www.eso.org/public/blog/stellar- ... xoplanets/
Stellar Fingerprints: Using Exoplanets to See the Surfaces of Stars
8 September 2017
Science Snapshots
The Universe is absolutely teeming with stars — at least 100 billion populate our Milky Way galaxy alone. Yet because most stars are very far away, it’s incredibly hard for astronomers to observe them as anything more than just points of light. But thanks to a clever method involving transiting exoplanets, astronomers might have found a solution that allows us to actually see what’s happening on stellar surfaces. We’ve asked Dainis Dravins of Lund University in Sweden for the details.

http://www.eso.org/public/blog/adaptive ... -facility/
Behind the scenes of the Adaptive Optics Facility

15 September 2017 On the Ground
What you’ll discover in this blog post:
• Why astronomical observations are impacted by the Earth’s atmosphere
• How adaptive optics works to improve our view of the Universe
• The challenges involved in building ESO’s cutting-edge Adaptive Optics Facility

http://www.eso.org/public/blog/photogra ... dark/?lang

Photographer in the Dark

Interview with ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek



22 September 2017 Outreach@ESO

What you’ll discover in this blog post:

• How ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek first fell in love with the Universe
• The role astrophotography plays in connecting people to astronomy
• The growing problem of light pollution
• Petr’s seven “pearls of astronomy” and why you should experience them

The skies above ESO’s sites in the Atacama Desert in Chile are among the darkest and most pristine in the world. Professional astronomers use ESO’s advanced instrumentation to seek answers to our never-ending questions about the Universe — but the dark Chilean skies are also beloved by photographers. ESO’s education and Public Outreach Department proudly supports a group of night-sky photographers called ESO Photo Ambassadors, who surprise us with astonishing views of ESO’s sites and the skies above them, bringing astronomy closer to the public. One of our Photo Ambassadors is Petr Horálek, a world-renowned astrophotographer, writer, traveller, and astronomer. He specialises in photographing rare night-sky phenomena and his images frequently appear in ESO publications and on the ESO website, as well as being chosen for numerous ESO Pictures of the Week and NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. We sat down to chat with him about the triumphs and challenges of astrophotography.

The illuminated dome of the Residencia at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile produces no light pollution to impede the work of the telescopes. Above, the magical arc of the Milky Way spans the sky. To the left, near the horizon, is the comet 252P/LINEAR, which made only its fifth closest approach to the Earth in recorded history on 22–23 March 2016. This wonderful image was taken during ESO's Fulldome Expedition to Chile, a team of photographers collecting spectacular images for use in planetarium presentations. Credit: ESO/P. Horálek

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A conversation with Guillem Anglada-Escudé, the scientist who led the discovery of our closest exoplanet
29 September 2017

The makings of the ground-breaking gravitational waves discovery
The scientists behind the telescopes tell their stories:
Interview with: Stephen Smartt and Stefano Covino

20 October 2017: Have you heard the game-changing news? For the first time ever, astronomers have observed the visible counterpart of a gravitational wave source. Gravitational waves were detected passing by Earth on 17 August, and telescopes around the world leapt into action to locate their source — spearheaded by ESO’s fleet of telescopes in Chile. Together, this global collaborative effort observed both gravitational waves and light from the same event, indicating that the source was the merger of two neutron stars. The drop-of-a-hat observing campaign involved dozens of scientists across the globe, and we asked two of them what it was really like to experience such a historic discovery first-hand. Here, we talk to Stephen Smartt (Queen’s University Belfast, UK) and Stefano Covino (INAF–Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Italy).
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