ESOcast SD

Phosphorus, present in our DNA and cell membranes, is an essential element for life. But how it arrived on the early Earth is something of a mystery. Astronomers have now traced the journey of phosphorus from star-forming regions to comets using the combined powers of ALMA and the European Space Agency’s probe Rosetta.

Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have observed reservoirs of cool gas around some of the earliest galaxies in the Universe. Watch this video to find out why this discovery is important.

ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has observed the central part of the Milky Way with spectacular resolution and uncovered new details about the history of star birth in our galaxy. Watch this video summary to find out more about the stunning image captured with the HAWK-I instrument on the VLT and the discoveries made about star formation in the central region of our Galaxy.

Researchers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have, for the first time, found evidence of a giant planet associated with a white dwarf star. The planet orbits the hot white dwarf, the remnant of a Sun-like star, at close range, causing its atmosphere to be stripped away and form a disc of gas around the star.

Astronomers using the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope have revealed that the asteroid Hygiea could be a dwarf planet. Find out more about this fascinating object in the new ESOcast Light.

Newly created strontium, an element used in fireworks, has been detected in space for the first time following observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The detection confirms that the heavier elements in the Universe can form in neutron star mergers, providing a missing piece of the puzzle of chemical element formation.

On 2 July 2019, a total solar eclipse occurred over ESO’s La Silla Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert. ESO invited nearly 25 scientists, communicators and educators to observe and document this rare occasion from La Silla.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) captured an unprecedented image of two circumstellar disks, in which baby stars are growing, feeding with material from their surrounding birth disk. These observations shed new light on the earliest phases of the lives of stars and help astronomers determine the conditions in which binary stars are born.

In November 2018 the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope pinpointed a fast radio burst, named FRB 181112. Follow-up observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and other telescopes revealed that the radio pulses have passed through the halo of a massive galaxy on their way toward Earth. This finding allowed astronomers to analyse the radio signal for clues about the nature of the halo gas.

Comparison of the Tarantula nebula in infrared and visible light

ESO’s VISTA telescope has been surveying our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud for about a decade. The observations revealed in unprecedented detail the properties of 10 million stars in the galaxy. As a result, astronomers have got new opportunities to study stellar evolution, galactic dynamics, and variable stars.

ESOcast 205 Light: The Rosy Glow of a Cosmic Seagull

ESOcast 204 Light: La Silla Total Solar Eclipse Concludes

ESOcast 203: Chile Chill 13 — Celestial Symphony

ESOcast 202 Light: ESO helps protect Earth from dangerous asteroids