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Paranal

The Paranal and the Shadow of the Earth

December 17, 2012

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter This beautiful photo, taken by ESO photo ambassador Babak Tafreshi, shows the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope array and VISTA telescope atop the peaks of the Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert. In the distance the Earth’s shadow extends outward toward [...]

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Makemake’s Mysteriously Missing Atmosphere

November 21, 2012

Artist’s impression of the surface of Makemake, a dwarf planet beyond Pluto (ESO/L. Calçada/Nick Risinger) It turns out there’s no air up there: the distant dwarf planet Makemake is surprisingly lacking in an atmosphere, according to findings made by astronomers using telescopes at ESO’s La Silla and Paranal observatories. Remove this ad

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How to Measure a Hot Jupiter

June 27, 2012

An international team of astronomers has figured out a way to determine details of an exoplanet’s atmosphere from 50 light-years away… even though the planet doesn’t transit the face of its star as seen from Earth. Remove this ad

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How Do The Biggest Telescopes Work?

May 17, 2012

Located high in the mountains of Chile’s Atacama Desert, the enormous telescopes of the European Southern Observatory have been providing astronomers with unprecedented views of the night sky for 50 years. ESO’s suite of telescopes take advantage of the cold, clear air over the Atacama, which is one of the driest places on Earth. But [...]

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VISTA View Is Chock Full Of Galaxies

March 22, 2012

See all those tiny points of light in this image? Most of them aren’t stars; they’re entire galaxies, seen by the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA survey telescope located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. This is a combination of over 6000 images taken with a total exposure time of 55 hours, and is the widest [...]

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