ESOcast HD

ESO has teamed up with Evans & Sutherland and the International Planetarium Society and others from the community to make a standard. We call it Data2Dome, in order to get the latest information into the domes.

The stunning new ALMA Residencia building has just been handed over.

Stellar explosions are most often associated with supernovae, the spectacular deaths of stars. But new ALMA observations of the Orion Nebula complex provide insights into explosions at the other end of the stellar life cycle, star birth. This ESOcast Light takes a quick look at the important facts.

New observations from ESO's Very Large Telescope have revealed stars forming in the huge outflows in galaxies, which are driven by central supermassive black holes. This ESOcast Light takes a quick look at the important facts.

New observations from ESO's Very Large Telescope have revealed that the outer parts of massive disc galaxies 10 billion years ago were rotating less quickly than the spiral galaxies, like the Milky Way, that we see today. This ESOcast Light summarises the important points of this discovery and the significance of dark matter, and how it is distributed.

ALMA observations have revealed that a very distant galaxy, seen when the Universe was just 4% of its current age, was rich in cosmic dust. This ESOcast Light quickly looks at what this means and why it is important.

A new image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope gives a very detailed view of the edge-on galaxy NGC 1055. This ESOcast Light takes a quick look at this image and explains what it shows.

Astronomers have found a system of seven Earth-sized planets just 40 light-years away. Using ground and space telescopes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope, the planets were all detected as they passed in front of their parent star, the ultracool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1.

This ESOcast Light presents five amazing facts about the 7 Earth-sized planets found in the nearby TRAPPIST-1 system, from their rocky composition to their potential to harbour water.

It’s hard to comprehend the sheer size of objects in space , but let’s give it a try!

A new image from ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope gives a very detailed view of the star formation regions NGC 6334 and NGC 6357, often called the Cat’s Paw Nebula and the Lobster Nebula, respectively, because of their distinctive shapes. This ESOcast Light takes a quick look at this spectacular vista and explains what it shows.

ESOcast 93 Light takes a quick look at four important contracts that were placed for big parts of ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) at a ceremony on 18 January 2017 in Garching. The giant telescope is moving forward!

The ALMA telescope has been used to study the Sun for the first time. It is also the first time that an ESO facility has been used to study our nearest star.

ESO has signed an agreement with the Breakthrough Initiatives to adapt the Very Large Telescope instrumentation in Chile to conduct a search for planets in the nearby star system Alpha Centauri. Such planets could be the targets for an eventual launch of miniature space probes by the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative.

This video takes a quick look at a new image of one of the coolest bits of the night sky — the Orion Nebula. By observing in infrared light the VISTA survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile can see through the dust and this allowed astronomers to catalogue nearly 800 000 objects in this region, young stars, strange outflows and very distant galaxies.