La Silla Paranal Observatory News
The page contains important news and events of the La Silla Paranal Observatory. It also covers some important telescope and instruments news from the La Silla, Paranal and APEX sites.
Paranal News
The section provides information and news from the Paranal Site. Older news from Paranal prior to 2005 can be found in the Previous News page.Telescopes
AT1+AT2+AT3
2007
- July 2, 2007: recoating of M1 of UT1 successfully completed
- March 8, 2007: recoating of M2 of UT2 successfully completed
- January 2007: AT4 commissioned and accepted for operations
2006
- December 5, 2006: UT2 recoating of M1/M3 completed
- September 5, 2006: UT4 recoating of M1/M3 completed
- May 12, 2006: First recoating of M2 of UT1 successfully completed
Instruments
2007
- August 1st, 2007: HAWKI: First Light of the instrument mounted at UT4.
- April 1st, 2007: AMBER: start of Science Operation with 3 ATs. Fringe tracking with FINITO is availabe to visitor mode PIs
- April 1st, 2007: CRIRES: start of Science Operation
- April 7, 2007: FORS1 CCD upgrade completed
- March 25, 2007: First light for MAD, the multi-conjugate adaptive optics demonstrator
- March 13, 2007: SINFONI: first commissioning with LGS completed
- March 8, 2007: Installation of new FLAMES FACB guiding TCCDs completed
- January 2007: NACO: first commissioning with LGS completed
2006
- December 18, 2006: LGSF successfully commissioned
- December 5, 2006: Installation of new UVES slit viewers TCCDs completed
- October 31, 2006: DAZLE visitor instrument succesfully commissioned on UT3
- October 29, 2006: Launch Telescope of LGSF successfully re-installed
- June 2006: commissioning of CRIRES at UT1 started
- April 2006: CRIRES AO system (MACAO) installed and commissioned at UT1
- January 28, 2006: first light of the Laser Guide Star Facility LGSF at UT4
La Silla News
The section provides the latest telescope and instruments news from the La Silla Site.More news can be found in the news section of theLa Silla Science Operations page.
- March 14, 2010: Updated service observing information Service Observing
- November 20, 2009: A new technique using near-infrared images, obtained with s 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT)ESO Watching a Cannibal Galaxy Dine
- April 6, 2009: La Silla Astroclimatology information (weather, seeing, extinction) was moved to a new location and can now be found on the mean navigation menu of the La Silla Facilities pages. Additional La Silla astroclimatology information will be added here.
- February 11, 2009: From the second week of July, 2009, observations will be carried out from a new control room located in the administration building.
- February 11, 2009: A new page describing the way that operations will run after P83 (ie from October 2009) is available here.
- April 22, 2008: A document that explains how to interface visitor instruments with focal stations of La Silla telescopes is available (2.8 MB PDF format).
- March 27, 2007: The dome of the 3.6m has been fully restored, and moves with nominal speed.
- October 05, 2006: The dome of the 3.6m enters an extended period of corrective maintenance. Science operations at the 3.6m is temporarily suspended until further notice.
- May 17, 2006: A Trio of Neptunes discovered with HARPS, see ESO PR 18/06
- January 26, 2006: A 5.5M_earth planet discovered with the 1.54m Danish telescope.