Rambling Readers

ESO

#Introduction Hi #fediverse ! We’re the European Southern Observatory, and we design, build and operate ground-based telescopes.

One of them is our Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction in #Chile. It will have a 39 m mirror, and its rotating enclosure will weigh 6100 tonnes, or about 700 mastodons!

We’re looking forward to chatting with all of you about #astronomy

📷 ESO/G. Vecchia

#astrodon #astrophysics #space #science

The giant metal frame of a dome takes up most of the picture frame, contrasting with the brown hills and a thin horizontal line of blue sky in the background. The dome's frame is not yet fully covered in the middle, so the dark brown landscape behind it shows. The big opening in the dome's roof shows the interior, still a construction site with a structure of white beams. In front of the big building is one red crane, taller than the dome.

1/ Happy 15th birthday, VISTA! The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, located at Paranal Observatory in #Chile, has been tirelessly mapping huge areas of the sky at infrared wavelengths. Its camera VIRCAM has captured stunning infrared vistas (see what I did there?) of our galaxy and beyond such as these: https://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/search/?facility=30

📷 G. Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)/ESO

#astrodon #astronomy #space #science

An image of a telescope inside its dome. The telescope is an open cylindrical structure with a 4-m wide primary mirror. The dome is partially open; it's daytime outside, and the dome's opening reveals a few other telescopes perched on a distant hill.

Juan Carlos Muñoz

Don't tell anyone, but we have a Stargate at ESO's Paranal Observatory in #Chile

#scifi #tv #movies

📷 ESO/G.Hüdepohl

A scene from the movie Stargate. There's a screen with a symbol that looks like an inverted V with a circle on top. A hand holding a sharpie is doodling on the screen.

A photograph of the Atacama Desert. Smooth ochre hills extend to the horizon. In the background there's a triangle shaped mountain covered in snow, with the full moon rising behind it, resembling the symbol in the previous image in this post. The entire image is bathed in golden sunset tones.

Juan Carlos Muñoz

1/ Work is progressing well on the central tower of ESO's Extremely Large Telescope in #Chile 's Atacama Desert. The ELT has a 5-mirror design, and three of them will be housed in the tower you see here. The M4 and M5 mirrors are particularly important to deliver sharp images, as they will counteract atmospheric turbulence and vibrations due to wind or the telescope's mechanisms.

➡️ https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2448a/?lang

📷 ESO/F. Carrasco (CHEPOX)

#astrodon #astronomy #space #engineering #science

This photo shows a construction site. A skeleton frame forming a tower takes up most of the frame. Its white steel beams contrast sharply against the bright blue sky behind it. Beams attached in V-shapes form a cylinder in five layers, its diameter becoming smaller towards the top. Scaffolding and concrete blocks are standing inside the skeleton. To the right of the skeleton frame, a person is standing on a crane platform, inspecting the construction at two thirds of its height. The skeleton frame is more than five times his height. Another person is standing inside the tower skeleton.

Juan Carlos Muñoz

Flashback to an observing run I did back in 2015 at the lovely du Pont 2.5m telescope in Las Campanas Observatory, #Chile

#astrodon #astronomy #space

A serene sunset photograph of a white telescope dome on a hill covered with grass and small rocks. To the left of the telescope, the setting Sun tints the landscape in golden shades. A few wispy clouds are scattered in the blue sky above.

fiona and marc

I have to tell you a bit more about the day we crossed the Argentine-Chilean border... 🇦🇷 —> 🇨🇱

You know already from the previous posts that we started that day from Villa la Angostura. When we reached the Argentinian 🇦🇷 border post we had already cycled 27 km (+ 660h.m.). The exit was quick and easy 😅
To reache the Chilean border post we would had to cycle a 38 km stretch over the Paso Cardenal Antonio Samoré at an altitude of 1,305 meters 🚵‍♀️ 🚵 I was uncertain if we could make it to Chile that day, but after lunch in the sun, we continued. The uphill cycling was tiring. As we ascended, the landscape changed; we saw snow alongside the road, and the vegetation became barren.
By 4 PM, I finally reached the pass, where Marc was waiting for me, as I was much slower than he …

I have to tell you a bit more about the day we crossed the Argentine-Chilean border... 🇦🇷 —> 🇨🇱

You know already from the previous posts that we started that day from Villa la Angostura. When we reached the Argentinian 🇦🇷 border post we had already cycled 27 km (+ 660h.m.). The exit was quick and easy 😅
To reache the Chilean border post we would had to cycle a 38 km stretch over the Paso Cardenal Antonio Samoré at an altitude of 1,305 meters 🚵‍♀️ 🚵 I was uncertain if we could make it to Chile that day, but after lunch in the sun, we continued. The uphill cycling was tiring. As we ascended, the landscape changed; we saw snow alongside the road, and the vegetation became barren.
By 4 PM, I finally reached the pass, where Marc was waiting for me, as I was much slower than he was.
We decided to cover the final 22 km to the Chilean border post before it closed (we thought it closed at 5 PM). As quickly as possible — despite the very bad road conditions that made it challenging to maintain speed — we raced down the mountain and arrived at the border post at 4:56 PM.
To our surprise, we learned that the post would remain open until 6 PM. So we had enough time to eat our leftover fresh food: a carrot, a tomato, and an apple, before crossing. Bringing fresh food like vegetables 🥕 fruits 🍓 dairy 🍶 meat 🍖 eggs 🥚honey 🍯 etc., is absolutely forbidden. We passed through several checkpoints, they issued a document for bringing our bikes into the country, and we had to fill out a declaration stating that we had no prohibited items with us 🫣 After a dog sniffed our bikes, we successfully entered Chile with honey in our bag 😇
Already on the race down from the mountain pass we enjoyed how the landscape changed back to green and vivid nature. Really amazing!
Not far from the border, we found a suitable camp-spot 🏕️
Dinner was simple: pasta with tomato sauce from a tetrapack, as we had no fresh ingredients...

#cycling #bikepacking #patagonia #argentina #chile

Bibiana Prinoth

I just read through my latest #introduction and it’s so outdated 👀

Hello friends 👋🐘

My name is Bibi and I am a final-year #PhD student in #astronomy and #astrophysics at Lund University in Sweden.

I observe #exoplanets with big #telescopes to study their atmospheric composition ✨🪐🔭

I recently spent a year in #Chile at #ESO, and now I am writing up my #thesis, and I am applying for #postdocs 🪐

I am the first in my family to go to uni, so you’ll definitely hear me talk about that ☺️ #scicomm

Jens Notroff

One of the driest places on Earth, #Chile's Atacama Desert, attracts hundreds of racers every year - but the #offroad fun is also threatening - and destroying - #Indigenous peoples' rich #CulturalHeritage, ancient monumental #geoglyphs:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/24/science/geoglyphs-atacama-desert-rallies.html via New York Times

Collection of before/after photos illustrating and emphasizing the destruction of geoglyphs.

jaz 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Really hoping to get a few more countries on the #DefaidodonDay list

https://toot.wales/@jaz/113441326553808711

Did I miss any? Know anyone you can get to post?

Would love to see #Argentina #Uruguay #Chile #Canada #Ireland #Mongolia #Turkey

#Defaidodon #Sheep #SheepOfMastodon

Anna Anthro

Chilean gymnast’s pull-up stunt hanging off torii gate in #Japan sparks outrage and debate on visitor etiquette #chile

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/3282720/tourists-torii-gate-pull-stunt-japan-sparks-outrage-and-debate-visitor-etiquette

Juan Carlos Muñoz

#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Chile

A cone-shaped volcano. The mountaintop is covered in snow and partially enshrouded by clouds. There's lush green vegetation in the foreground, at the bottom of the frame.

Juan Carlos Muñoz

#Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan ATLAS) as seen from the construction site of ESO's Extremely Large Telescope in #Chile

The image was taken with one of our webcams, which you can check here: https://elt.eso.org/about/webcams/

#astrodon #astronomy #space #astrophotography

A night shot of a huge metallic dome under a starry sky. The dome is partially covered with rectangular panels, but there are openings revealing complex mechanical structures inside. There's a gigantic crane next to the dome, and some smaller cylindrical structures with criss-cross beams on the ground next to the dome. There's an elongated white smudge of light on the sky –– the comet –– above a golden horizon that signals the imminent sunrise. The moon shines brightly to the left.

Juan Carlos Muñoz

#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Chile

The shore of a turquoise lagoon, sprinkled with white mineral deposits. There's some low vegetation around the shore and, in the background, a dark triangular mountain, its peak covered in snow. The sky is blue and mostly clear, with just a few wispy clouds here and there.

Juan Carlos Muñoz

ESO's VISTA telescope in #Chile has been mapping the central regions of our galaxy in the infrared for 13 years, peering through the dust and gas that pervades it. The result? 500 terabytes of infrared images covering an area on the sky equivalent to 8600 full moons –– a treasure trove of discoveries to be made!

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2413/

#astrodon #astronomy #space #science

Juan Carlos Muñoz

1/ This pic I took a few years ago at ESO's Paranal Observatory in #Chile almost didn't look like this! I was about to go to sleep when I saw that the folks at the UT4 telescope were using the lasers, so I decided to snap a quick shot.

But when reviewing the image on my camera's screen I noticed something was off. I looked up and saw that some clouds had rolled in within seconds! Here you can see the lasers going through two cloud layers.

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophotography #science

A night image of a desert landscape under a starry sky. There's a low dome in the foreground, partially buried underground. In the background there are some telescopes perched atop a mountain. One of them is firing yellow/orange lasers up to the sky. As the lasers intercept some clouds, they make them glow in yellow/orange.