المرصد الجنوبي الأوروپي European Southern Observatory ‏(ESO، وسابقاً: المنظمة الأوروبية للأبحاث الفلكية في نصف الكرة الجنوبي؛ بالفرنسية: Organisation Européenne pour des Recherches Astronomiques dans l'Hémisphere Austral) هومنظمة أبحاث دولية من 16 دولة for ground-based astronomy. Created in 1962, ESO has provided astronomers with state-of-the-art research facilities and access to the southern sky. The organisation employs about 730 staff members and receives annual member state contributions of approximately €131 million. Its observatories are located in northern Chile.

ESO has built and operated some of the largest and most technologically advanced telescopes. These include the New Technology Telescope, an early pioneer in the use of active optics, and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which consists of four individual telescopes, each with a primary mirror 8.2 metre across, and four smaller auxiliary telescopes. The Atacama Large Millimeter Array observes the universe in the millimetre and submillimetre wavelength ranges, and is the world's largest ground-based astronomy project to date. It was completed in March 2013 in an international collaboration by Europe (represented by ESO), North America, East Asia and Chile.

Currently under construction is the European Extremely Large Telescope. It will use a 39.3-metre-diameter segmented mirror, and become the world's largest optical reflecting telescope when operational in 2024. Its light-gathering power will allow detailed studies of planets around other stars, the first objects in the universe, supermassive black holes, and the nature and distribution of the dark matter and dark energy which dominate the universe.

ESO's observing facilities have made astronomical discoveries and produced several astronomical catalogues. Its findings include the discovery of the most distant gamma-ray burst and evidence for a black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. In 2004, the VLT allowed astronomers to obtain the first picture of an extrasolar planet (2M1207b) orbiting a brown dwarf 173 light-years away. The High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument installed in another ESO telescope led to the discovery of extrasolar planets, including Gliese 581 c—one of the smallest planets seen outside the solar system.

التاريخ

الدول الأعضاء

مواقع الرصد التشيلية

Chajnantor (1999)

Paranal (1998)

E-ELT (2024)

La Silla (1964)

Bolivia

Argentina

Chile

Map of Chile with ESO's four observatories

لا سيا

منطق رئيسي: مرصد لا سيا

ESO 3.6-metre telescope

منطق رئيسي: ESO 3.6 m Telescope

MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope

منطق رئيسي: MPG/ESO telescope

التلسكوبات الأخرى

La Silla also hosts several national and project telescopes not operated by ESO. Among them are the Swiss Euler Telescope, the Danish National Telescope and the REM, TRAPPIST and TAROT telescopes.

• The Euler Telescope is a 1.2-metre telescope built and operated by the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. It is used to conduct high-precision radial velocity measurements primarily used in the search for large extrasolar planets in the southern celestial hemisphere. Its first discovery was a planet orbiting Gliese 86. Other observing programmes focus on variable stars, asteroseismology, gamma-ray bursts, monitoring active galactic nuclei (AGN) and gravitational lenses.
• The 1.54-metre Danish National Telescope was built by Grubb-Parsons and has been in use at La Silla since 1979. The telescope has an off-axis mount, and the optics are a Ritchey-Chrétien design. Because of the telescope's mount and limited space inside the dome, it has significant pointing restrictions.

• The Rapid Eye Mount telescope is a small rapid-reaction automatic telescope with a primary 60-centiمتر (24 بوصة) mirror. The telescope, in an altazimuth mount, began operation in October 2002. The primary purpose of the telescope is to follow the afterglow of the GRBs detected by the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission satellite.
• The Belgian TRAPPIST is a joint venture between the University of Liège and Geneva Observatory. The 0.60-metre telescope is specialized in comets, exoplanets, and was one of the few telescopes that observed a stellar occultation of the dwarf planet Eris, revealing that it may be smaller than Pluto.
• The Quick-action telescope for transient objects, TAROT, is a very fast-moving optical robotic telescope able to observe a gamma-ray burst from its beginning. Satellites detecting GRBs send signals to TAROT, which can provide a sub-arc second position to the astronomical community. Data from the TAROT telescope is also useful in studying the evolution of GRBs, the physics of a fireball and its surrounding material. It is operated from the Haute-Provence Observatory in France.

Paranal

منطق رئيسي: Paranal Observatory

The Paranal Observatory is located atop Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Cerro Paranal is a 2,635-متر-high (8,645 قدم) mountain about 120 kiloمترs (390,000 قدم) south of Antofagasta and 12 kiloمترs (39,000 قدم) from the Pacific coast.

The observatory has seven major telescopes operating in visible and infrared light: the four 8.2-متر (27 قدم) telescopes of the Very Large Telescope, the 2.6-متر (8 قدم 6 بوصة) VLT Survey Telescope (VST) and the 4.1-متر (13 قدم) Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy. In addition, there are four 1.8-متر (5 قدم 11 بوصة) auxiliary telescopes forming an array used for interferometric observations. In March 2008, Paranal was the location for several scenes of the 22nd James Bond film, Quantum of Solace.

التلسكوب الكبير جداً

منطق رئيسي: Very Large Telescope

تلسكوبات المسح

الاكتشافات الكبرى

التواصل مع الجمهور

المطبوعات

معرض فيديوهات

• 

  ESO's 50th-anniversary event (Munich Residenz in Germany, 11 October 2012)

• 

  ESO's first 50 years of exploring the southern sky

• 

  José Manuel Barroso visits the ESO in January 2013.

• 

  Tim de Zeeuw talks on ESO and its 50th Anniversary.

• 

  The temporary office buildings at the ESO Headquarters in Garching being dismantled.

• 

  Timelapses of ESO's VLT, ALMA and La Silla site

معرض صور

هذه مختارات من قائمة أفضل مائة صورة التقطها ESO.

• VISTA's infrared view of the Orion Nebula

• The Helix Nebula

• The Globular Cluster Omega Centauri

• A 340-million pixel starscape from Paranal

• NGC 2264 and the Christmas Tree cluster

• The Centre of the Milky Way

• NGC 2467 and Surroundings

• The Horsehead Nebula

• Messier 78: a reflection nebula in Orion

• The WR 22 and Eta Carinae regions of the Carina Nebula

• The hidden fires of the Flame Nebula

• Early morning on Paranal

• The future ALMA array on Chajnantor (artist's rendering)

• Rare 360-degree Panorama of the Southern Sky

• 370-million-pixel starscape of the Lagoon Nebula

• The Milky Way panorama

• The Omega Nebula

• Centaurus A

• Glowing Stellar Nurseries

• The R Coronae Australis region imaged with the Wide Field Imager at La Silla

انظر أيضاً

• Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, U.S. main site in Chile
• European Extremely Large Telescope, ESO's largest telescope under construction
• European Northern Observatory
• Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, telescopes on the Canary Islands, Spain
• Teide Observatory, telescopes on the Canary Islands, Spain

References

Bibliography

• Shaw, E. N. (1976). "The European Southern Observatory". The Observatory. London: Royal Astronomical Society.
• Council of Europe (2010). . 58. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. cdxliii. ISBN .
• Lodewijk, Woltjer (2012). Europe's Quest for The Universe. EDP Sciences. ISBN .
• Schilling, Govert; Christensen, Lars Lindberg (2013). Europe to the Stars: ESO's first 50 years of exploring the southern sky. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN .

وصلات خارجية

• Atacama Large Millimeter Array
• APEX telescope
• ESO
• ESO Top 100 Images
• Webpage for the ESO telescopes at La Silla Observatory
• Paranal Observatory
• James Bond at Paranal
• ESOcast
• ESO Vimeo channel
• 2011 video explaining the current and planned work of ESO

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