The first episode of Chasing Starlight brings you the top 5 science results made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The VLT is one of the most powerful optical telescopes on the planet and this year marks its 25th anniversary. Join ESO astronomer Suzanna Randall to learn about these results.
Join ESO astronomer, Suzanna Randall, as we look at three common cosmic beliefs in the latest episode of Chasing Starlight. Which ones are true or false? Watch our Chasing Starlight episode to find out.
You’ve probably heard that "We are made of star stuff". This phrase was coined by Carl Sagan 50 years ago and has since made it into pop-culture. But is that really true? And what does it mean? In this Chasing Starlight episode, you will discover where and how the elements in the human body were born.
Explore the science behind some of the most popular science fiction movies, such as Avatar and Interstellar. In this episode, ESO astronomer, Suzanna Randall, explores what is fact and what is fiction in Avatar’s Alpha Centauri system, Betelgeuse’s fate and Interstellar’s Gargantua black hole. Along the way see how discoveries made with ESO’s telescopes help us get a deeper appreciation of the world of science fiction.
Your eyes are fine-tuned by thousands of years of evolution to see what is called visible light. But this makes up only a tiny fraction of all the light out there. Even though invisible, the light you cannot see plays a significant role in your life, from helping you communicate over long distances, having safe plane landings in the fog or getting your broken bones checked. When it comes to space, whole new realms are uncovered by this invisible light. Join ESO astronomer, Suzanna Randall, in the latest episode of Chasing Starlight and discover what different types of light reveal about the Universe.
What future science can we expect to do with the telescope that will look billions of years back in time, as if being a time machine? Join ESO astronomer, Suzanna Randall, in this episode of Chasing Starlight, as we explore the discoveries we expect to make with ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).
Perhaps you did not know, but astronomers are fighting for the dark side. For them, the darkest places on Earth aren’t filled with evil and aggression, just uninterrupted views of the cosmos. Unfortunately, such places are under threat from light pollution. Join ESO astronomer, Suzanna Randall, in this episode of Chasing Starlight, to learn about light pollution, what causes it and how we can mitigate it.
There are some pretty strange stellar characters out there... Join ESO astronomer, Suzanna Randall, in this episode of Chasing Starlight, as she explores three of the wackiest, weirdest, most wonderful stars in our Universe.
Travel to the world’s largest telescope array. Made of 66 antennas, the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) has been observing the sky at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths for 10 years now. Join ESO astronomer, Suzanna Randall, in the latest episode of Chasing Starlight, to find out about some of the greatest discoveries of this telescope.
With a 39-m mirror, ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope will be the largest optical telescope ever built. But how will we protect it from the harsh conditions of the Atacama Desert? Join ESO astronomer Suzanna Randall in this episode of Chasing Starlight, where she travels to Chile to tell us about the amazing engineering behind the ELT’s gigantic dome.
Chile's Atacama Desert boasts some of the darkest skies on Earth, but it's also a very seismic area. How do we protect our huge and sophisticated telescopes against earthquakes? Follow ESO astronomer Suzanna Randall in this episode of Chasing Starlight, where she travels to Chile to show us the clever anti-seismic technology that keeps our telescopes safe.
How did our Earth come to be? What conditions make it a hospitable world? Could similar habitable planets exist around other stars? In this episode of Chasing Starlight, ESO astronomer Suzanna Randall gives us the secret recipe to bake an Earth, and shows us how ESO telescopes are revealing what’s cooking around other stars.
Scientists have just made the highest-resolution observations yet from the surface of the Earth. In this episode of Chasing Starlight, ESO astronomer Suzanna Randall reveals how a pilot experiment using telescopes that are part of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration was able to obtain the highest-resolution observations ever made from the ground. Thanks to these test observations, the EHT Collaboration estimates that, in the future, they will be able to make black hole images 50% more detailed than was possible before.
Images of galaxies and nebulae often look very colourful. But where do these colours come from? Are they real? What do they mean? In this episode of Chasing Starlight we show you everything that goes behind the scenes when making astronomical images, from how astronomical detectors actually work to how we choose what colours to display.
You’ve probably seen artist’s illustrations of the cosmos, but how are they made, and why? Besides stunning images, telescopes also capture more complex data that can be hard to interpret by non-astronomers. In this episode of Chasing Starlight we show you how astronomers, artists and communicators work together to translate astronomical data into visuals that are both stunning and scientifically accurate.
T Coronae Borealis, nicknamed the Blaze Star, erupts every 80 years or so, becoming visible to the naked eye. Based on recent behaviour the star should have flared again in late 2024, but it didn't! Astronomers are thus eagerly waiting for this imminent explosion. In this episode of Chasing Starlight we tell you how professional telescopes can quickly react to sudden cosmic events like this one.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have detected oxygen in JADES-GS-z14-0, the most distant galaxy known so far. This is the earliest detection of oxygen yet, and it’s very intriguing. How did galaxies evolve fast enough to get enriched with heavy elements like oxygen so early on? In this Chasing Starlight episode, we will show you everything behind this incredible achievement, and explain how it's changing what we knew about the conditions of the early Universe.
Turbulence in our atmosphere blurs images of the cosmos, but astronomers have a trick up their sleeve: adaptive optics. Using powerful lasers and fast deformable mirrors we can correct this blurring in real time and obtain extremely sharp astronomical images. In this episode of Chasing Starlight we show you how this amazing technology works and how it’s implemented in our telescopes.
Black holes are objects so massive and compact that not even light can escape from inside them. But just how massive can they get? In this episode of Chasing Starlight we take you on a tour of the most extreme black holes we know of. Note: when we talk about supermassive black holes in the second part of the video, we mention "distances" that correspond in fact to the time it takes the light of those objects to reach us. Due to the expansion of the Universe, the actual distances are larger. Also, note that Gaia BH3 is the most massive stellar black hole in the Milky Way, but there are more massive ones in other galaxies.
Remember asteroid 2024 YR4? Earlier this year, its odds of impacting Earth in 2032 rose to around 3%, the highest impact probability ever reached for a sizable asteroid. How did we end up ruling out such an impact? And what can we do if we ever find another dangerous asteroid? In this episode of Chasing Starlight we give you a crash course on planetary defence.
We have observed the formation of giant planets in discs around young stars before. But now, for the first time, we have found a planetary system that turns the clock back even further, right to when the first specks of planet-forming material were created. In this Chasing Starlight episode, we’ll explore how we could be witnessing the dawn of a new Solar System around the young star HOPS-315.
In the last 30 years we've discovered around 6000 planets orbiting other stars. But how do astronomers find these exoplanets? And can we take real images of them?
In 2017 the Event Horizon Telescope – a worldwide network of radio-telescopes – observed the supermassive black hole at the centre of the M87 galaxy, leading to the first ever image of a black hole, released in 2019. Now, using observations from 2017, 2018 and 2021, astronomers have found some changes in this now iconic image that could be caused by variations in the magnetic field around the black hole.
We’ve been working towards this for decades, and now the time has finally come. Last week, ESO’s Paranal Observatory was host to a show unlike any other as four lasers, one from each of the 8-metre telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), were projected into the skies. All in the name of science, of course. In this Chasing Starlight episode, we’ll explore GRAVITY+, a massive upgrade to ESO's VLT Interferometer and how new lasers are opening up the southern sky to this facility.
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS has sparked controversial speculations about its possible origin. In this episode of Chasing Starlight we talk to Cyrielle Opitom, a comet expert who has studied 3I/ATLAS extensively, to discuss all the available observations and better understand this fascinating objec. Spoiler alert: it's not aliens.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) will be the world’s largest and most powerful gamma-ray observatory. It will detect high energy radiation from some of the most powerful events in the Universe, from supernova explosions to hungry black holes. But our atmosphere protects us from gamma rays, so how will the CTAO achieve this? By doing something seemingly impossible: observing particles that move faster than light, without breaking the laws of physics.
With its 39 m primary mirror, ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will be the biggest and most powerful optical telescope in the world. In this episode of Chasing Starlight we take you on an exclusive tour of the ELT, from the massive telescope structure inside the dome to the facility that will coat the mirrors with reflective silver.