In ESOcast 124 ESO’s outgoing Director General, Tim de Zeeuw, gives us his thoughts and reflections on a decade at ESO.

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have detected titanium oxide in an exoplanet atmosphere for the first time. This discovery around the hot-Jupiter planet WASP-19b exploited the power of the FORS2 instrument. It provides unique information about the chemical composition and the temperature and pressure structure of the atmosphere of this unusual and very hot world.

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer astronomers have constructed the most detailed image ever of a star — the red supergiant star Antares. They have also made the first map of the velocities of material the atmosphere of a star other than the Sun, revealing unexpected turbulence in Antares’s huge extended atmosphere.

Observations of “Jellyfish galaxies” with ESO’s Very Large Telescope have revealed a previously unknown way to fuel supermassive black holes. It seems the mechanism that produces the tentacles of gas and newborn stars that give these galaxies their nickname also makes it possible for the gas to reach the central regions of the galaxies, feeding the black hole that lurks in each of them and causing it to shine brilliantly.

A new analysis of data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and other telescopes suggests that the orbits of stars around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way show the subtle effects predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

This video takes a relaxed look at a tense process — cleaning and recoating the surface of one of the ESO Very Large Telescope’s 8.2-metre main mirrors.

ESO’s new Adaptive Optics Facility has just opened its eyes to the sky for the first time. Coupled with the revolutionary instrument MUSE, this is one of the most advanced and powerful technological systems ever built for ground-based astronomy.

Surprise: astronomers have found what look like three different generations of baby stars​ within the Orion Nebula Cluster.

The MASCARA (Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA) station at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has achieved first light. This new facility will seek out transiting exoplanets as they pass in front of their bright parent stars and create a catalogue of targets for future exoplanet characterisation observations.

ESOcast 116 explores how astronomers request time to use an ESO telescope, and how ESO’s Observing Programmes Committee, embarking on its one-hundredth meeting, examines and judges these proposals in order to ensure that ESO is making the best use of its telescopes to advance our knowledge and understanding of the Universe.