Paranal Observatory is an

astronomical observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysical, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. H ...

operated by the

European Southern Observatory The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 member states for ground-based ast ...

(ESO). It is located in the

Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert ( es, Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in th ...

of northern

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

on Cerro Paranal at altitude, south of

Antofagasta Antofagasta () is a port city in northern Chile, about north of Santiago. It is the capital of Antofagasta Province and Antofagasta Region. According to the 2015 census, the city has a population of 402,669. After the Spanish American wars ...

. By total light-collecting area, it is the largest optical-infrared observatory in the Southern Hemisphere; worldwide, it is second to the

Mauna Kea Observatory The Mauna Kea Observatories (MKO) are a group of independent astronomical research facilities and large telescope observatories that are located at the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, United States. The facilities are locate ...

on Hawaii. The

Very Large Telescope The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is a telescope facility operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It consists of four individual telescopes, each with a primary mirror 8.2 m acro ...

(VLT), the largest telescope on Paranal, is composed of four separate telescopes. In addition, the four main telescopes can be used simultaneously for extra light gathering capacity, and for

interferometry Interferometry is a technique which uses the '' interference'' of superimposed waves to extract information. Interferometry typically uses electromagnetic waves and is an important investigative technique in the fields of astronomy, fiber o ...

. Four auxiliary telescopes of each are also part of the VLTI to make it available when the main telescopes are being used for other projects. The site also houses two survey telescopes with wide fields of view, the VISTA and the

VLT Survey Telescope The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) is a telescope located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is housed in an enclosure immediately adjacent to the four Very Large Telescope (VLT) Unit Telescopes on the summit o ...

for surveying large areas of the sky; and two arrays of small telescopes called NGTS and

SPECULOOS Speculoos (sold as Biscoff in the United States and the United Kingdom) is a biscuit originally manufactured in Belgium. Although the name is similar to speculaas, speculoos is a different product. The biscuits are made without the mixture of spic ...

which are dedicated to searching for

exoplanets An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

. Two major new facilities are under construction nearby: the southern part of the

Cherenkov Telescope Array The Cherenkov Telescope Array or CTA is a multinational, worldwide project to build a new generation of ground-based gamma-ray instrument in the energy range extending from some tens of GeV to about 300 TeV. It is proposed as an open observatory a ...

gamma-ray telescope (not owned by ESO) will be sited in the grounds 10 km south-east of Paranal; while ESO's future E-ELT will be on the nearby peak of Cerro Armazones 20 km east of Paranal, and will share some of the base facilities.

Telescopes

Aerial view

From an aerial view of the Paranal Observatory, the four large units of the VLT with their four small, dome-shaped auxiliary telescopes can be clearly seen. The Survey Telescope, VST, is immediately adjacent to the VLT and seen in between two of its units, while VISTA is located on a secondary peak, some 1,500 m away in the background ''(see image)''.

Very Large Telescope

The

(VLT) consists of four 8.2-metre telescopes operating in the visible and

infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of Light, visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from ...

. These telescopes, along with four smaller auxiliary telescopes, are also combined to operate as an

optical interferometer Interferometry is a technique which uses the ''interference'' of superimposed waves to extract information. Interferometry typically uses electromagnetic waves and is an important investigative technique in the fields of astronomy, fiber opti ...

on certain nights of the year. All of the 8.2-metre telescopes have

adaptive optics Adaptive optics (AO) is a technology used to improve the performance of optical systems by reducing the effect of incoming wavefront distortions by deforming a mirror in order to compensate for the distortion. It is used in astronomical tele ...

and a full suite of instruments.

VISTA Survey Telescope

VISTA is the ''Visible & Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy'', a 4.0-metre telescope with a wide

field of view The field of view (FoV) is the extent of the observable world that is seen at any given moment. In the case of optical instruments or sensors it is a solid angle through which a detector is sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. Human ...

, focusing on infrared surveys of the sky. It was built close to ESO's VLT by a consortium of 18 universities from the United Kingdom, led by

Queen Mary University of London , mottoeng = With united powers , established = 1785 – The London Hospital Medical College1843 – St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College1882 – Westfield College1887 – East London College/Queen Mary College , type = Public researc ...

. VISTA was handed over to the European Southern Observatory in December 2009.

VLT Survey Telescope (VST)

The

or VST is a 2.6-metre telescope with a wide field imager intended to aid the four Very Large Telescope (VLTs) in their scientific aims.

Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS)

The

Next-Generation Transit Survey The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a ground-based robotic search for exoplanets. The facility is located at Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, about 2 km from ESO's Very Large Telescope and 0.5 km fr ...

(NGTS) is an

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

-survey facility located a few kilometers from the main peak. It consists of an array of twelve 0.2-meter robotic telescopes with a very large field of view of 96 square degrees or several hundred times the area of the full moon. The survey aims to discover numerous

super-Earth A super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth's, but substantially below those of the Solar System's ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, which are 14.5 and 17 times Earth's, respectively. The term "super-Earth" refers only to ...

s and Neptune-sized planets around nearby stars, using transit photometry to detect them. NGTS is managed by a partnership of seven academic institutions from Chile, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom and its design is based on the SuperWASP project. Science operations began in early 2015.

SPECULOOS Southern Observatory (SSO)

The SPECULOOS Southern Observatory (SSO) consists out of four telescopes, called Europa, Io, Callisto, and Ganymede. ESO hosts the 1-meter telescopes and the project is led by the

University of Liège The University of Liège (french: Université de Liège), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French. As of 2020, ULiège is ranked in the ...

. The project aims to find

around ultracool dwarf stars and

brown dwarfs Brown dwarfs (also called failed stars) are substellar objects that are not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen ( 1H) into helium in their cores, unlike a main-sequence star. Instead, they have a mass between the mos ...

. The project builds on the success of the

TRAPPIST The Trappists, officially known as the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance ( la, Ordo Cisterciensis Strictioris Observantiae, abbreviated as OCSO) and originally named the Order of Reformed Cistercians of Our Lady of La Trappe, are a ...

telescope. The telescopes are located next to the NGTS.

Other buildings

As well as the telescopes, control buildings and maintenance facilities, Paranal has a Residencia which provides accommodation for staff and visitors. This is located 200 m lower and 3 km from the telescopes. It is built half into the mountain with the concrete coloured to blend into the landscape. It has gym facilities, a swimming pool, a restaurant and two gardens. The construction was decorated by the Chilean

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Paula Gutiérrez Erlandsen, Marchioness of la Pica.

Gallery

Image:From a Dirt Track to the World's Leading Observatory.jpg, Main entrance of the Paranal Observatory. File:360-degree Panorama of the Southern Sky edit.jpg, A 360-degree panorama of the southern sky above the Paranal platform Image:Wallpaper of Paranal and the Basecamp.jpg, The ESO Residencia (center left) and basecamp at Paranal Image:Very Large Telescope Array.aerial view.jpg, Aerial view Image:Paranal platform.jpg, Paranal platform with the VLTs, the ATs and VST File:The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) at Paranal.jpg, The NGTS with the VLT and VISTA (background) Image:Paranal Platform as Night Sets In .jpg, The platform as night sets Image:Laser Towards Milky Ways Centre.jpg, Beam of the

laser guide star A laser guide star is an artificial star image created for use in astronomical adaptive optics systems, which are employed in large telescopes in order to correct atmospheric distortion of light (called '' astronomical seeing''). Adaptive op ...

facility at VLT's Yepun Unit File:Paranal Time-lapse 2012(2f).ogg, Time-lapse taken at Paranal, showing the

Magellanic Clouds The Magellanic Clouds (''Magellanic system'' or ''Nubeculae Magellani'') are two irregular dwarf galaxies in the southern celestial hemisphere. Orbiting the Milky Way galaxy, these satellite galaxies are members of the Local Group. Because bo ...

File:Full tour of ESO's Paranal Observatory in miniature.webm, Full tour of the facility in

LEGO Lego ( , ; stylized as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of variously colored interlocki ...

® form File:Paranal Observatory Compilation 2017.webm, This collection of video clips shows daily life at the observatory File:Tour the Skies - potw2004a.jpg, Tour the Skies. File:Colour in the air - Potw2007a.jpg, Colour in the air. File:SPECULOOS Observatory eso1839a.jpg, Three of the

telescopes

Popular culture and other uses

To illustrate the isolation of the Paranal Observatory from the lights of civilization, it is located in straight-line distance north of Paposo, population 259, the nearest community to the observatory.Google Earth The VLT hotel, the Residencia, served as a backdrop for part of the 2008 James Bond film ''

Quantum of Solace ''Quantum of Solace'' is a 2008 spy film and the twenty-second in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sequel to ''Casino Royale'' (2006). Directed by Marc Forster and written by Neil Purvis, Robert Wade, and ...

''. The observatory's facilities were used to stage the

Pacific Alliance The Pacific Alliance ( es, link=no, Alianza del Pacífico) is a Latin American trade bloc, formed by Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, which all border the Pacific Ocean. The alliance was formed with the express purpose of improving regional in ...

's fourth summit in June 2012, formally launching the organization. On 14 March 2013,

Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, Count of Monpezat, (Frederik André Henrik Christian; born 26 May 1968) is the heir apparent to the Danish throne. He is the elder son of Queen Margrethe II and Prince Henrik. Early life Crown Prince Fred ...

, accompanied by his wife, Princess Mary, visited ESO's Paranal Observatory, as part of an official visit to Chile. Their tour of Paranal's astronomical facilities was led by ESO's Director General, Tim de Zeeuw.

References

External links

European Southern Observatory homepageParanal Observatory homepageVisits to the Paranal Observatory
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Photo gallery of ESO Paranal Observatory
{{Portal bar, Chile, Stars, Spaceflight, Solar System, Science Astronomical observatories in Chile Atacama Desert Buildings and structures in Antofagasta Region European Southern Observatory Articles containing video clips