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.

Soaring through the cloudless Chilean sky might seem like something from a dream, but this ESOcast allows you to do just that. Incredible aerial photography of ESO’s facilities in Chile provides a new perspective on the world’s most productive astronomical observatories, showcasing their engineering ingenuity and spectacular surroundings from a whole new angle.

A team of photographers, including some ESO Photo Ambassadors, is visiting the observatory sites in Chile to obtain images for use in planetarium presentations. This is ESO's Fulldome Expedition.

This is the ESOcast that no viewer will want to miss. We discuss the result of the quest to find a planet around the closest star to the Solar System.

ESO is a place where talented engineers, astronomers and many other specialists from all over the world meet and work together. A place where knowledge is shared to provide the astronomical community with the tools to conduct cutting-edge research. One of the ESO scientists who is well known to ESOcast viewers is our regular presenter, Dr J. aka Dr Joe Liske.

Chile’s Atacama Desert is one of the driest places in the world. It’s paradise for the professional astronomers who use ESO’s telescopes. Some of the world’s most powerful instruments for astronomical research are here.

ESO has awarded the biggest contract in ground-based astronomy — to build the E-ELT dome and telescope structure. So it’s a good time to take a look at what the E-ELT will be.

Astronomers using telescopes at ESO's observatories in Chile have discovered three planets around a dim dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth. These worlds have sizes and temperatures similar to those of Venus and the Earth, and they are the best targets so far found in the hunt for life elsewhere in the Universe.

The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is famed for its dark night skies, which can be enjoyed in their full glory thanks to the absence of light pollution. But even the darkest sky is not completely dark. Astronomers at ESO's observatories often encounter a natural light phenomenon above ESO’s telescopes known as the zodiacal light.