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ESOcast 225 Light: ESO Telescope Captures Disappearance of Massive Star

Astronomers have discovered the absence of an unstable massive star in a dwarf galaxy with ESO’s Very Large Telescope. This video offers a summary of the research.

ESOcast 224: First Interstellar Visitors to the Solar System

In this ESOcast, we explore some of the many questions interstellar visitors 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov have raised including: what are they made of? How did they form? Are they like the comets or asteroids in our Solar System? And finally, what can they reveal about other planetary systems?

ESOcast Light 223: Hot Stars are Plagued by Giant Magnetic Spots

Astronomers using ESO telescopes have discovered giant spots on the surface of extremely hot stars hidden in stellar clusters. This video offers a summary of the discovery.

ESOcast 222: Ten Fascinating Paradoxes about the Universe

This video lets you see some of the many things we do not understand in the Universe, and the strange and surreal paradoxes in what we think we understand…

ESOcast 221 Light: ESO Telescope Sees Signs of Planet Birth

Observations with ESO’s SPHERE instrument on the Very Large Telescope have revealed the telltale signs of a star system being born.

ESOcast 220 Light: Closest Black Hole to Earth Found

A team of astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other institutes has discovered a black hole lying just 1000 light-years from Earth. The black hole is closer to our Solar System than any other found to date and forms part of a triple system that can be seen with the naked eye.

ESOcast 219 Light: Star Dance Around Supermassive Black Hole

ESO's Very Large Telescope has observed a star dancing around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The observations have revealed, for the first time, that the star’s orbit is shaped like a rosette and not like an ellipse.

ESO astronomy at home

As doctors and nurses are on the frontlines, saving the lives of those infected by COVID-19, others have a role to play to prevent the disease spreading further by staying at home. This goes for ESO staff as well, including astronomers and telescope operators.

ESOcast 218: The Stranger Exoplanets

What are the strangest exoplanets ever found or studied with ESO telescopes? Watch this ESOcast to find out.

ESOcast 217 Light: ESO Telescope Sees Surface of Dim Betelgeuse

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have captured the unprecedented dimming of Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star in the constellation Orion.

ESOcast 216 Light: ALMA Catches Beautiful Outcome of Stellar Fight

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, have spotted a peculiar gas cloud that resulted from a confrontation between two stars. Find out more about this stellar fight in this ESOcast Light.

ESOcast 215 Light: Interstellar Thread of One of Life’s Building Blocks Revealed

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.

ESOcast 214 Light: A Black Holes' Breakfast at the Cosmic Dawn

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.

ESOcast 213 Light: Stunning stars in the Milky Way central region

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.

ESOcast 212 Light: First Giant Planet around White Dwarf Found

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.

ESOcast 211 Light: ESO Telescope Reveals What Could be the Smallest Dwarf Planet in the Solar System

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.

ESOcast 210 Light: First identification of a heavy element born from neutron star collision

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.

ESOcast 209: Outreach and Science During the Total Solar Eclipse at La Silla

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.

ESOcast 208 Light: A Cosmic Pretzel (4K UHD)

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.

ESOcast 207 Light: Enigmatic radio burst illuminates a galaxy’s tranquil ​halo (4K UHD)

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

ESOcast 206 Light: VISTA Unveils the Large Magellanic Cloud (4K UHD)

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

ESOcast 201 Light: ATTRACT

ESOcast 200 Light: ESO helps map the Galaxy

ESOcast 199 Light: Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. In coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers revealed that they succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.

ESOcast 198 Light: La Silla Observatory turns 50!

Since its inauguration in 1969, ESO’s La Silla Observatory has been at the forefront of astronomy. Its suite of state-of-the-art instruments has allowed astronomers to make ground-breaking discoveries and paved the way for future generations of telescopes.

ESOcast 197 Light: GRAVITY uncovers stormy exoplanet skies

ESOcast 196 Light: 20 Years of exploring the Universe

ESO is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of one of the VLT’s most versatile instruments, the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph -- FORS2.

ESOcast 195 Light: A Cosmic Bat in Flight

Hidden in one of the darkest corners of the Orion constellation, this Cosmic Bat is spreading its hazy wings through interstellar space two thousand light-years away.

ESOcast 194: Cutting Edge of Contemporary Astronomy

In this ESOcast, six astronomers tell us about the hottest topics in contemporary astronomy. Covering topics ranging from dark matter to exoplanets, these astronomers make the case for why these cutting-edge fields deserve time at ESO's telescopes.

ESOcast 193 Light: Bubbles of Brand New Stars

This dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be picked out in visible light.

ESOcast 192 Light: GRAVITY Resolves a Gravitationally Microlensed Star

The GRAVITY instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) has seen what seems an impossible sight...

ESOcast 191 Light: A Fleeting Moment in Time

The faint, ephemeral glow emanating from the planetary nebula ESO 577-24 persists for only a short time -- around 10,000 years, a blink of an eye in astronomical terms. ESO’s Very Large Telescope captured this shell of glowing ionised gas -- the last breath of the dying star whose simmering remains are visible at the heart of this image. As the gaseous shell of this planetary nebula expands and grows dimmer, it will slowly disappear from sight.

ESOcast 190: Chile Chill 12 — Fire in the Heavens

In Chile Chill 12 the evocative tunes of ESO’s Music Ambassador Dimitris Polychroniadis are set to stunning visuals from ESO’s expansive video archive. Sit back, relax, and enjoy a stellar walk through the Universe on the border between science and art.

ESOcast 189 Light: World’s Largest Array of Gamma-Ray Telescope comes to Paranal

ESOcast 188 Light: Dancing with the Enemy