eso annual report 2013

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Annual Report 2013

European Organisationfor AstronomicalResearch in theSouthern Hemisphere

ESO


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Annual Report 2013

ESO

European Organisationfor AstronomicalResearch in theSouthern Hemisphere

presented to the Council by theDirector General

Prof. Tim de Zeeuw


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2 ESO Annual Report 2013

magnitude 30 have been obtained in aone-hour exposure. This correspondsto seeing objects that are four billiontimes fainter than those seen with thenaked eye.

One of the most exciting features of theVLT is the option to use it as a giantoptical interferometer (VLT Interferometeror VLTI). This is done by combining thelight from two or more of the 8.2-metretelescopes and or from the four 1.8-metremovable Auxiliary Telescopes. In thisinterferometric mode, the telescope hasvision as sharp as that of a telescope the

ESO, the European Southern Observa-tory, is the foremost intergovernmentalastronomy organisation in Europe. It issupported by 15 countries: Austria,Belgium, Brazil1, the Czech Republic,Denmark, France, Finland, Germany,Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain,Sweden, Switzerland and the UnitedKingdom. Several other countries haveexpressed an interest in membership.

Created in 1962, ESO carries out anambitious programme focussed on thedesign, construction and operationof powerful ground-based observingfacilities, enabling astronomers to makeimportant scientic discoveries. ESO

also plays a leading role in promotingand organising cooperation in astro-nomical research.

ESO operates three world-class observ-ing sites in the Atacama Desert regionof Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor.

ESOs rst site is at La Silla, sited

2400 metres above sea level on a moun-tain 600 kilometres north of Santiagode Chile. It is equipped with several opti-cal telescopes with mirror diameters ofup to 3.6 metres.

The 3.58-metre New Technology Tele-scope (NTT) broke new ground for tele-scope engineering and design and wasthe rst in the world to have a computer-

controlled main mirror, a technologydeveloped at ESO and now applied tomost of the worlds current large tele-scopes. While La Silla remains at the

forefront of astronomy, and is still thefourth most scientically productive in

ground-based astronomy (after Paranal,NRAO and the Keck Observatory), theParanal site, with the Very Large Tele-scope array (VLT), the Visible and InfraredSurvey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA),the worlds largest survey telescope,and the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), thelargest telescope designed to exclusivelysurvey the skies in visible light, and sitedat 2600 metres above sea level, is the

agship facility of European astronomy.

Paranal is situated about 130 kilometressouth of Antofagasta in Chile, 12 kilo-metres inland from the Pacic coast in

one of the driest areas in the world.Scientic operations began in 1999 and

have resulted in many extremely suc-cessful research programmes.

The VLT is a most unusual telescope,based on the latest technology. It is not

just one, but an array of four telescopes,each with a main mirror of 8.2 metresin diameter. With one such telescope,images of celestial objects as faint as

The European Southern Observatory

1Brazil, having signed an Accession Agreement inDecember 2010, will ofcially become the 15th

Member State of ESO on completion of the requi-site ratication process.

The VLT uses a power ful laser to create a guide starin the night sky.

ESOs La Silla Observatory under a perfect sk y.

ESO/JosFranciscoSalgado(josefrancisco.org)

ESO/J.Girard


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3ESO Annual Repor t 2013

size of the separation between themost distant mirrors. For the VLTI, thisis 200 metres.

Each year, about 1800 proposals aresubmitted for the use of ESO telescopes,requesting between three and ve times

more nights than are availab le. ESO is themost productive ground-based observa-tory in the world, whose operation yieldsmany peer-reviewed publications: in 2013alone, 840 refereed papers based onESO data were published.

The Atacama Large Mi llimeter/submil li-meter Array (ALMA), the largest ground-based astronomy project in existence,is a revolutionary facility for world astron-omy. ALMA comprises an array of 6612- and 7-metre diameter antennasobserving at millimetre and submillimetrewavelengths. ALMA started scientic

observations in 2011 and was inaugu-rated in 2013. It is located on the high alti-tude Llano de Chajnantor, at 5000 metres

above sea level one of the highestastronomical observatories in the world.

The ALMA project is a partnershipbetween Europe, East Asia and North

America, in cooperation with the Repub-lic of Chile. ESO is the European partnerin ALMA.

The Chajnantor si te is also home to theAtacama Pathnder Experiment (APEX) a

12-metre millimetre and submillimetretelescope, operated by ESO on behalf ofthe Max Planck Institute for Radio Astron-omy, the Onsala Space Observatory andESO itself.

The next step beyond the VLT is to buildthe European Extremely Large Telescope(E-ELT) with a primary mirror 39 metres indiameter. The E-ELT will be the worldsthe biggest eye on the sky the largestoptical/near-infrared telescope in theworld. The E-ELT will address many ofthe most pressing unsolved questions inastronomy. It may, eventually, revolution-ise our perception of the Universe, muchas Galileos telescope did 400 years ago.

The start of operat ions is expected at thebeginning of next decade.

The ESO Headquarters are located inGarching, near Munich, Germany. This isthe scientic, technical and administrative

centre of ESO, where technical develop-ment programmes are carried out to pro-vide the observatories with the most

advanced instruments. ESOs ofces in

Chile are located in Vitacura, Santiago.They host the local administration andsupport groups, and are home to ESOChile astronomers when they are not atthe observatories. This site also containsthe ALMA Santiago Central Ofce. ESO

Vitacura has become an active node fortraining new generations of researchers,acting as a bridge between scientists inEurope and Chile.

The regular Member State contr ibu-tions to ESO in 2013 were approximately130 million euros and ESO employs

around 680 staff members.

This panorama shows 28 of the antennas that makeup the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.

Arti sts impression o f the European Extremely LargeTelescope i n its enc losure on Cerro Armazones.

ESO

/L.Calada


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Contents

The European Southern Observatory 2Foreword 6Introduction 7Science 10 Research Highlights 11 Ofces for Science 20 Allocation of Telescope T ime 24 Publication Digest 27Operations 30 La Silla Paranal Observatory 31 Data Management and Operations Division 38 European ALMA Support Centre 42Programmes 44 Instrumentation for the

La Silla Paranal Observatory 45

ALMA 52 European Extremely Large Telescope 60Engineering 62

Administrat ion 72 Finance and Budget 74Human Resources 78 List of Staff 82 Organigram 86Director General Support 88Committees 96 Council 97 Finance Committee 99 Scientic Technical Committee 100 Observing Programmes Committee 102 Users Committee 104Outreach 108Calendar of Events 114Glossary of Acronyms 118


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ESO has evolved into a very powerfulorganisation with an outstanding but verychallenging programme of infrastructureto build and operate. In fact it can beargued that the span of ESOs activities isvery much at the limit of the capabilitiesof the available budget and of its mostvaluable, but not excessively numerousstaff complement. But there are othermajor future items of astronomical infra-structure in the portfolio of the govern-ments of ESO Member States. Thesegovernments declare in the preamble ofESOs Convention that they are Desirousof [] promoting and organising coopera-

tion in astronomical research, whichis interpreted as ESO being mandated tofoster cooperation in astronomy. Councilhas started to reect on whether ESO

should take a more proactive role in ena-bling these facilities, beyond building andoperating its own telescope suite. Oursister European international organisa-tions in space science (ESA) and particlephysics (CERN) have already adopteda strategic role extending beyond theirown facilities. Is there a similar role to beplayed by ESO in the realm of largeground-based astronomical infrastruc-ture? The thinking has just started.

hiatus in science observations to facilitatearray commissioning, difculties in get-ting the power production and distribu-tion system into a normal operationalstate, and a temporary cessation of activ-ities at the ALMA site during negotiationswith the local staff. This fortunately endedwith the signature of a new collectivecontract. ALMA will no doubt face otherchallenges on its way to becoming afully operational astronomical observa-tory. But these potential problems appearinsignicant when confronted with the

absolutely astonishing science that ALMAdelivers. With virtually every single ALMAobservation becoming a breakthrough,submillimetre radio astronomy is trulyentering a new era.

Council was glad to see signicant

progress towards the ratication of

Brazils Accession Agreement. The le

entered the Brazilian Parliament earlythis year and passed with a unanimouspositive vote the rst two commissions of

the Brazilian Congress. The ratication

process continues and the entire ESOfamily looks forward to formalising its of-cial welcome to Brazil as its 15th MemberState.

The E-ELT programme also made verysignicant progress. Early in the year,

Council received conrmation of the UKs

participation in the programme, andsoon added Denmark to the list of partici-pating Member States. At the moment,only Spain is still to formalise its partici-pation in the E-ELT. Fortunately the inter-nal process taking place within Spaintowards joining appears well advanced.Having all the Member States participat-ing in all ESO programmes has provedto be a major strength of the organisationand Council looks forward to this phasefor the E-ELT.

A key mi lestone towards E-ELT construc-tion was achieved in November, whenthe Finance Committee with the sup-port of Council awarded the contractto build the road and atten the top of

Cerro Armazones, where the E-ELT willbe erected. Plans to start procuring majoritems for the telescope are on the tableand Council will face important decisionson this critical phase during the comingyears.

It is tempting to open this shor t forewordby highlighting a major positive develop-ment. There is possibly none as impor-tant as this one: ESOs operating tele-scopes at La Silla, Paranal and APEX on

Chajnantor have continued to deliveroutstanding world-class science. Thevery efcient model that ESO has adopted

to operate its observatories, togetherwith its highly skilled and dedicated staff,have been instrumental in reaching thisprimary goal of ESOs remit. Keepinga healthy instrumentation programme forESOs facilities, in par tnership with insti-tutes from the Member States, is also afundamental ingredient in maintaining thecompetitiveness of La SillaParanal into

future decades.

In a modest but charming ceremonyon 9 November, ESO and the Republic

of Chile celebrated 50 years of workingtogether to foster astronomy. Thisprovided a unique opportunity to lookback and realise how much both Chileanand European astronomy has evolvedand beneted from this continuing and

immensely fruitful partnership.

ALMA, the unique submi llimetre obser-vatory that ESO is building and operat-ing in partnership with organisations inNorth America and East Asia, met severalimportant milestones during the year.

The President of the Republic of Chile,Sebastin Piera Echenique, inauguratedthe observatory on 13 March in a cere-mony that gathered together dignitariesfrom the partner regions, including allESO Council delegates and manyambassadors and astronomers from allover the world, authorities and colleaguesfrom Chile and representatives fromthe local communities. Almost at thesame time, ALMA welcomed its newdirector, Pierre Cox, replacing Thijs deGraauw, who had successfully led theproject throughout most of its construc-tion phase. ESO delivered the last of its25 highest-quality antennas to ALMA,thus concluding the largest industrialcontract ever placed in its history. Coun-cil commends all involved in reaching thismajor milestone.

During its ramp-up from construction tooperations, ALMA also faced signicant

difculties, including a planned temporary

Foreword


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The past year has been as exciting andchallenging as 2012 and saw majorprogress on many fronts. As alreadysummarised in the foreword by the Presi-dent of Council, the science output ofthe La Silla Paranal Observatory contin-ues to increase and powerful new instru-mentation is being added. ALMA wasinaugurated, the 25 antennas from the

AEM consortium have been deliveredand the Early Science results are simplystunning. The sustained activities aimedat getting the Brazilian Accession Agree-ment ratied by the Brazilian Parliament

started to bear fruit and 13 of the Mem-ber States have now joined the E-ELTprogramme, with Spain expected to joinin the course of 2014.

In late January, the Government of Chilehosted the rst summit of the Community

of Latin American and Caribbean Statesand the European Union, which broughtmany heads of state to Santiago. ESOsactivities were showcased during thesummit and a number of the high-levelparticipants visited Paranal, including theleadership of the European Union (Lady

Ashton, President Barroso and PresidentVan Rompuy). ALMAs inauguration inMarch also attracted high-level repre-sentatives of the Member States, includ-ing Minister Crato of Portugal and Minis-ter Tchterle of Austria, as well as the EUScience Advisor Glover.

On 27 October President Piera of Chile,accompanied by the Minister of Foreign

Affairs Moreno, visited Paranal to handover in person the deed to the tract ofland containing Cerro Armazones. Thisgenerous donation had been agreedbetween Chile and ESO in late 2011. Theceremony signied that all the internal

Chilean procedures required for the actu-al handover had been completed. Thisis a key step towards the realisation ofthe E-ELT, and it allows work to star t onthe construction of a new road to, and aplatform on, Armazones.

A few days later, a number of activit iestook place to celebrate the 50th anni-versary of the signing of the agreementbetween ESO and the Government ofChile for the establishment of the (rst)

ESO telescopes in Chile. This led to thecreation of the La Silla Observatory and,

subsequently, the further expansion of

The of ce moves started before the end

of the year and will be completed in therst quar ter of 2014, bringing all Head-quarters staff into a single set of intercon-nected buildings. This removes the needto rent space in the Max Planck Institutefor Plasma Physics building elsewhere oncampus and, nally, allows the removal

of the venerable portacabins and themore recent temporary ofce building in

the course of 2014.

The day before the inauguration, Dr KlausTschira formalised the donation of animpressive Visitor Centre by the Founda-tion bearing his name. It has been knownsince antiquity that a new star sometimesappears in the heavens. In the scientic

language of the day, Latin, it was calledstella novaor simplynova. Much laterit was realised that some of these are, infact, very distant and hence very brightexplosions of entire stars and they weregiven the namesupernova. The uniquedesign of the new building resembles thatof a close double star transferring massfrom one component to the other aprocess that will ultimately lead to theheavier component exploding as a super-nova, briey becoming as bright as the

light from all the stars in the Milky Waytogether and easily visible from Earth.

The expectation is that the new centrewill similarly shine like a supernova, gen-erating an enthusiasm and passion for

the programme with the Very Large Tele-scope on Cerro Paranal, partnership in

ALMA and APEX on Llano de Chajnantor

and the construction of the E-ELT onCerro Armazones. In this same periodChile has become the world centre forground-based astronomy. This owesmuch to the determination of the Govern-ment of Chile to protect the extraordinarybut fragile treasure of its clear and darkskies, but also to its equally determinedsupport of science and technology in thecountry, to the active promotion of inter-national cooperation, and to the publicappreciation of the night sky as a part ofits cultural heritage.

Chile provides far more than a privilegedplatform for astronomical observation;Chilean universities and research institu-tions nowadays host internationally rec-ognised scientists and research teamsworking at some of the leading frontiersof astronomy and cosmology. In thoseinstitutions, engineering programmes arebeing developed to produce state-of-the-art astro-technology products, devel-oping capabilities and knowhow that alsobenet many other aspects of Chilean

society. ESO is proud to be associatedwith such an impressive growth in capa-bilities and looks forward to further closecollaboration in the future. This is anexample of international cooperation atits best.

Careful planning has led to an improve-ment in ESOs nancial situation. As a

follow-up to the 2011 engagement sur-vey, full and transparent matrix manage-ment of engineering services, improvedinternal communication including thelaunch of the Intranews and regularDG coffees and the introduction ofan improved performance appraisalprocedure were introduced. HumanResources and Administration were (re-)combined into a single Directorate of

Administrat ion, IT services were harmo-nised across ESO, and the Ofce of

the Director General was restructured.

The long-awaited Headquar ters exten-sion, consisting of a modern ofce

and conference building and a separatetechnical building, both designed by AuerWeber and built by BAM Deutschland

AG, was inaugurated on 4 December, just18 months after the rst stone was laid.

Introduction


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astronomy over a very wide catchmentarea. Construction will start in early 2015and will take two years.

ESOs programme continues to grow,with E-ELT construction about to start.

The new Council room is scoped for afurther increase in Member States. Thetechnical building has an appropriatelysized integration hall for instrumentsprior to their shipment to the observa-tories. The recently improved organisa-tional structure, implementing full matrixmanagement of the engineering servicesthat will allow ESO to efciently carry

out multiple programmes in parallel, ismaterially helped by having all the staff inbuildings connected by the threewaybridge and containing multiple interactionareas. This will help to further improveinternal communication and staff engage-ment.

The engagement of the ESO astronomi-cal community in making use of ourfacilities remains as high and productiveas ever, as symbolised by the fact thatthe year 2013 saw the 10 000th scientic

paper from ESO data. The resultsobtained with ALMA are already living upto its high expectations, the VLT and

APEX are now mature observatories and

impressive machines of astronomicaldiscovery and La Silla continues to hold

two of the most efcient 4-metre-class

telescopes in the world an excellentstarting point for the exciting years aheadwhen the E-ELT will begin making its con-tributions.

Part of the interior of ESOs new ofce and confer-ence building in Garching.


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RolandHalbe


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Science

ESO

|Acknow

ledgement:MartinPugh


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The standard model for the formation ofstructure in the Universe (known asLambda Cold Dark Matter, CDM) usessemi-analytic approximations to modelthe physical processes that lead to theconversion of gas into stars and thus intogalaxies. The baryonic physics involvedis complex and not well understood, butit can be replaced by gastrophysicalrecipes that, using information extractedbasically from observations, capture theinformation about the various processesinvolved. Thus, signicant progress in the

understanding of the physical processesinvolved in the formation and evolutionof galaxies necessarily involves statisticsthat, in turn, require a colossal amount ofdata. A great leap forward resulted fromthe exploitation of the Sloan Digital SkySurvey (SDSS), which provided high qual-ity and uniform spectroscopic and photo-metric information for millions of galaxies.However, the SDSS is limited to localgalaxies, thus providing an accurate pic-ture of only the present structure of gal-axies. The next step is to conduct similarsurveys in terms of quality and uniformity,but reaching galaxies at higher redshiftsand hence longer lookback times in thehistory of the Universe.

The VIMOS spectrograph has under-taken three such large surveys: VVDS,covering several existing imaging surveys;zCOSMOS, targeting the Hubble Space

Telescope (HST ) COSMOS eld, and

VIPERS, which is observing galaxies inthe Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope

This year saw some signicant changes

in the Directorate. The Ofce for

External Relations was closed and itsfunctions moved to the DirectorGeneral. The team of programme sci-entists was completed with the hiringof Jean-Philippe Berger for the VLTIand now covers all ESO programmes.

As part of the matrix structure, theinstrument scientists have been trans-ferred from the Instrumentation Divi-sion and now form a new departmentof the Directorate of Science. TheDirectorate now has a consolidatedstructure, developed as part of therestructuring of the organisation. The

ALMA inauguration was a goodmoment to advertise ESO and itsactivities to a larger community. Sev-eral scientic workshops explored

future capabilities, such as one onE-ELT instrumentation and a workshopon ultraviolet astronomy. The newelectronic Science Newsletter waslaunched to improve the ow of infor-mation to the community.

Research Highlights

Understanding galaxy formation and evolution

This glowing jumble of gas clouds make up ahuge stellar nursery nicknamed the Prawn

Nebula. Taken using the VLT Survey Telescopeat ESOs Paranal Observatory in Chil e, this pic-ture shows clumps of hot newborn stars nestledin among the clouds that make up the nebula.

Legacy Survey-Wide eld. In combina-tion, these surveys will return data forclose to 200 000 galaxies, which is smallcompared to the SDSS, but does reachout to redshifts ofz~ 1 when the Uni-verse was about half of its present age.

The rst analysis of these surveys, some

of which were reported in previousAnnual Reports, reveal two interestingresults. The rst is that the luminosity

function of galaxies seems to be thesame everywhere and every-when welook and represented by the Schech-ter function. The second is that star for-mation in galaxies seems to ceaseabruptly for some unknown reason. ThezCOSMOS team has shown that thishappens through a mechanism termedquenching. This seems to exist in twodistinct avours: environmental quench-ing and mass quenching. In particular,the most massive galaxies in their darkmatter haloes called centrals by thezCOSMOS team only experiencemass quenching, while sate llites (any oth-er galaxy in the same halo) stop formingstars by either or both mechanisms. Inthe case of mass quenching, star forma-tion ends rapidly when galaxies reacha certain mass. There is, as yet, no goodtheory to explain how this mechanismworks, but one hypothesis is that whenthe star formation rates reach a certainthreshold, the gas is violently and ef-ciently expelled from the galaxies, driveneither by supernovae, stellar winds, orsome other mechanism. This results inthere being no, or very little, gas remaining

The main panel shows the stella r discof NGC 253 in the Two Micron All Sky

SurveyJHKcomposite. The insetshows the central 2 kpc in false colour(soft X-ray emission, blue; Hemis-sion, yellow). The white contours rep-resent CO emission distribution ob-served by ALMA. (Bolatto et al., 2013)


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In general, it is not clear what fraction ofthe outowing gas actually escapes

galaxies, particularly for low-velocity star-burst-driven winds like that in NGC 253.

Most of the baryons ejected by windsmay just linger in the enriched haloes ofstar-forming galaxies to later rain backonto their discs, providing fuel for newepisodes of star formation. The ALMAobservations of NGC 253 show that the

mass-loading of the starburst-driven windis substantial and underlies the impor-tance of recycling the enriched material inthe star formation history of galaxies.

to fuel subsequent periods of active starformation.

ALMA has made a number of observa-tions both in the local Universe and athigh redshifts that appear to support thisscenario. Locally, ALMA observed thenearby starburst galaxy NGC 253 in the

Sculptor Group, located a mere 3.4 Mpcfrom our own galaxy. This galaxy is expe-riencing a powerful burst of star forma-tion in its nuclear region, as shown in thegure to the right, and which has been

known for some time to be dr iving a pow-erful wind of ionised gas.

Several of the extra-planar carbon mon-oxide (CO) features can be traced backin position and velocity to expandingmolecular shell structures in the starburstregion of NGC 253, providing clues to

the launching mechanisms of the molec-ular wind. Two of these structures werefound by previous CO observations anddubbed superbubbles. Four expandingshells with radii of 6090 pc and expan-sion velocities of 2342 km/s are found.

The large momentum associated witheach shell suggests that they are drivenby the combined effects of multiple stellarwinds and at later stages by super-novae originating in young stellar clustersthat are not directly observed and forwhich, from the expanding shell dynam-ics, masses of about 640 104M

for

ages tcluster < 3 Myr are inferred.

The total molecular mass outow rate

driven by these winds is uncertain, mostlybecause the ratio of CO mass to totalmolecular hydrogen (H2) mass is in gen-eral poorly constrained for molecular

clouds outside the Milky Way and theLarge Magellanic Clouds, but can beinferred to be between 3 and 30 M

/yr,

with a value of about 9 M/yr using

the Milky Way CO to H2conversion ratio.

Thus, even in the most conservativecase, the molecular mass-loss rate iscomparable to the observed star forma-tion rate (~ 2.8 M

/yr) in the starburst

of NGC 253 and probably a few times

higher. Consequently, the central regionsof NGC 253 will run out of gas in a few

tens of millions of years.

This pi cture shows a view o f a three-dimensiona lvisualisation of ALMA observations of cold carbonmonoxide gas in the nearby starburst galaxyNGC 253 (The Sculptor Galaxy). The colours repre-sent the intensity of the emission detected by ALMA,

with pink being the strongest and red the weakest.These data have been used to show that hugeamounts of cool gas are being ejected from the cen-tral parts of this galaxy. This will make it more dif-cult for the next generation of stars to form.

ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/ErikRosolowsky

High-redshift galaxies

ALMA is also providing fundamentalinformation about star formation andmolecular outows in the furthest

reaches of the Universe. In particular,ALMA has nally removed the barrier that

had severely hampered the identication

of the most massive star-forming galaxiesin the Universe. These galaxies, known

as submillimetre galaxies, are so dustythat they are rendered extremely faint atoptical and infrared wavelengths, makingit difcult to identify and obtain their

redshifts in earlier submillimetre surveyscarried out with much lower spatialresolution. One of the promises of ALMAwas to allow the direct determination of

the redshifts of submillimetre galaxiesfrom their submillimetre spectrum.

ALMA observations of 26 submillimetregalaxies from a sample found in a surveywith the South Pole Telescope (SPT)conrmed that 23 of these 26 galaxies lie

at redshiftsz> 4, substantially increasing


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part of the mid-infrared ux originates on

scales included within the 0.110 parsec

region around the central black hole.Secondly, the large variety of measuredemission radii, even for AGN with similarluminosity, challenges the view that a sin-gle mechanism is responsible for theemission. Apart from the amount of unre-solved ux, no signicant difference was

found between sources seen from thepolar direction (type 1) and those seenfrom close to the disc plane (type 2).

Although the dust tori are thought to bevery similar in all sources, radiative trans-fer simulations predict, contrary to thenew observations, signicant differences

In recent decades astronomers havegathered compelling observationalevidence that almost every galaxy hostsa massive black hole at its centre. Ina number of cases, the black hole is somassive that its accreting and emittingpower can dominate the radiation spec-trum of the entire galaxy.

The cores of these active galax ies arecalled active galactic nuclei (AGN) andare among the most energetic objectsin the Universe. They are the focus ofintense observational and theoreticalstudy since they provide unique laborato-ries for probing the accretion and ejectionprocesses around a central supermas-sive black hole.

Several classes of active galaxy havebeen dened based on their observa-

tional properties. Some of the most pop-ular unied models propose to explain

these differences as a consequence ofthe orientation of the galaxy with respectto the observers line of sight. In thesemodels, the presence of a geometricallythick dusty torus, surrounding a massiveaccretion disc that powers a strongwind and feeds the central black hole, isinvoked to account for the differentapparent classes. Within this paradigm,the torus emission dominates the entiremid-infrared spectrum. However, thereis accumulating evidence that the picturemight be more complex and require addi-tional physical processes to be taken intoaccount.

Challenging these models requiresobservations at spatial scales where thedifferent components can be resolved.

These direct observat ions are mandatoryto bridge the gap between large-scaleand inner-scale structures. Only infraredinterferometry can provide the required10-milliarcsecond resolution.

The Very Large Telescope Interferometerand its MIDI instrument have been exten-sively used in recent years to develop anew understanding of AGN. In particularthey have provided direct evidence thatthe dust emission can only be accounted

for if it is distributed in the form ofclumps. The most recent observationsare providing both a detailed and a statis-tical new view of AGN.

By accumulating numerous interfero-metric observations using pairwise com-binations of a ll Unit Telescopes (UTs),the mid-infrared emission of the AGNNGC 3783 has been exquisitely mapped.

These observations reveal that the warmdust, as observed in the mid-infrared,is aligned with the polar axis of the accre-tion disc, which is approximately per-pendicular to the hot dust previouslyobserved with the AMBER instrument.Both separate regions correspond to twodistinct bumps in the infrared spectralenergy distributions. This result is surpris-ing since it is difcult to reconcile with a

single equatorial dust torus, the standardpicture for the dusty region in AGN. Thus,these results are a strong incentive torevise current models to account for thisobservation by including the contributionof dusty winds.

MIDI has also been used to carry outthe rst VLTI Large Programme observa-tion of sample of 23 AGN. This remark-able achievement was made possibleby pushing the limits of the techniquebeyond the existing sensitivity frontier toreveal the diversity of dusty AGN tori. Therst conclusion of the programme is that

a signicant fraction of the sources show

unexpectedly high levels of unresolvedux, even at the milliarcsecond resolution

of the VLTI. This means that a signicant

Active galactic nuclei

The level of unresolved ux as a function of reso lu-tion. It is evident that resolution plays only a minorrole in how the torus appears at mid-infrared wave-lengths, proving the diversity of morphologies.(Burtscher et al., 2013)

Type 1 AGN

Type 2 AGN

NGC 1068

Circinus

Pointsource

fraction

Resolution/Inner radius rin

0.0

0 5 10 15

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

The sizeluminosity relation of AGN tor i from thesublimation radius (green and orange points) to thebody of the torus (MIDI, blue and red points type 1 and type 2 sources). (Bur tscher et al., 2013) Bolometric luminosity (erg/s)

0.01

0.10

1.00

10.00

1042 1043 1044 1045 1046 1047 1048

Half-lightradius(pc)

Mid-IR interferometry ( Type 1 AGN)

Mid-IR interferometry ( Type 2 AGN)

Near-IR interferometry (Swain, Kishimoto, Pott, Weigelt)

Near-IR reverberation mapping data + fit (Suganuma)


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in the observed size when viewed fromdifferent directions. This is a problem forthe orientation-based unied models

upon which these simulations are based.Finally, for the best-resolved sourceswhere evidence of extended polar elon-gation was revealed, the compactemission could be accounted for by athindisc model attributed to the inner-most part of the dusty torus. Such mod-els do not, however, provide the cover-ing factor needed for this type of unica-tion.

Overall these studies have revealed thenecessity to revise signicantly the dust

distribution models at parsec scalesaround supermassive black holes and area strong incentive to pursue the accu-mulation of spatially resolved observa-tions. The possibility to resolve and dis-tinguish the exact morphologies of themid-infrared emission of a number of

AGN will be greatly facili tated by the suc-cessor to the MIDI instrument, MATISSE.

This instrument will be operational at theVLTI around 2017. By a llowing the four

UTs to be combined, MATISSE will pro-vide ten times more information in asingle observation than MIDI. The near-infrared second generation VLTI instru-ment GRAVITY will provide comple-mentary information by measuring thesize and geometry of the broad-lineregions that are located closer to thesupermassive black hole. This will openthe way to detailed statistical studiesand improve dramatically our understand-ing of the physical processes occurring atparsec scales in AGN.

Weather on brown dwarfs: between stars and planets

Brown dwarfs are more massive thanplanets, but not massive enough to initi-ate the sustained hydrogen fusion in theircores that powers self-luminous stars.

They are born hot as a result of gravita-tional energy being transformed into heatduring their contraction phases. Theythen slowly cool as they age. As they fallbelow ~ 2300 K, liquid or crystalline par-ticles composed of calcium aluminates,silicates, and/or iron condense intoatmospheric dust that, in turn, disap-pears at around 1300 K. Models toexplain this dust dispersal incorporate anabrupt sinking of the entire cloud deckinto the deep, unobservable part of theatmosphere, or a breakup of the cloudinto scattered patches as seen, for exam-ple, on Jupiter and Saturn. Up until now,however, observations of brown dwarfshave been limited to globally integratedmeasurements and such measurements,although they can reveal surface inhomo-geneities, cannot unambiguously resolvesurface features.

New high-resolution observations withthe VLT spectrometer CRIRES of thebinary brown dwarf Luhman 16AB,located a mere 2 pc from the Sun, haveallowed, for the rst time, a map of

the two-dimensional dust distributionon one of the stars, Luhman 16B, to beconstructed.

The fact that the system is a binary madeit possible to constrain the inclination

angle of the rotation axes of the star andtherefore to use Doppler imaging tech-niques to construct the cloud map. Thisis shown in the gure above over a full

rotation period of the star. The mapshows a large, dark, mid-latitude region;a brighter area on the opposite hemi-sphere located close to the pole; andmottling at equatorial latitudes.

These features are natura lly explainedas the patchy global clouds that areinferred to exist from observations ofmulti-wavelength variability. The dark

areas would represent thicker clouds thatobscure deeper and hotter parts of theatmosphere, whereas bright regions cor-respond to holes in the upper cloud lay-ers that provide a view of the hotter,deeper interior. The high-latitude brightspot could be similar to the polar vorticesseen on Jupiter and Saturn, and pre-dicted to exist on highly irradiated gasgiants in short-period orbits around otherstars. Jupiter and Saturn also exhibitprominent atmospheric bands, but thedata from the CRIRES spectrographare not sufciently sensitive to enable the

detection of banding on the star.

Long-term monitoring of Luhman 16Bsuggests that its weather conditionschange rapidly, but remain at least partlycoherent from one night to the next, indi-cating that the characteristic timescalefor the evolution of global weather pat-terns is of order one day. In this case,successive full nights of Doppler imagingcould observe the formation, evolutionand breakup of global weather patterns the rst time such a study would be

possible outside the Solar System.Measurements of this kind would providea revolutionary new benchmark againstwhich to compare global circulationmodels of dusty atmospheres and could,perhaps, even measure differential rota-tion in Luhman 16Bs atmosphere.

Surface map of Luhman 16B showing a bright near-polar region (seen in the upper-right panels) anda darker mid-latitude area (lower-left panels) consist-ent with large-scale cloud inhomogeneities. Thelightest and darkest regions shown correspond tobrightness variations of roughly 10%. The rotationperiod of this star is 4.1 hours. (Crosseld et al.,

2014)

3.2 h

4.1 h 0.0 h

0.8 h

1.6 h2.4 h


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in many of the transition discs, suggest-ing that this feedback process from plan-ets on the outer disc is a common featureand may be the dominant mechanism forthe formation of large bodies at large dis-tances from the central star.

The high sensit ivity of ALMA, even underthe limited conditions of Cycle 0, hasallowed relatively high angular resolutionand good sensitivity maps of differentmolecular species in protoplanetary discsto be made. Impor tantly, it is now possi-ble to observe the indirect chemicaleffects of the drop of CO abundance inthe gas phase as it condenses on thedust ice mantles in the cooler regions ofthe disc (T < 20 K ). The snowlines of CO(the most abundant molecule after H2)and water are very impor tant in under-standing the planetary formation processand, in particular, the accretion of COand/or H2O onto planetary atmospheres.

The H2O snowline is still too close to thecentral star to be observed directly by

ALMA in Cycle 0, but the detection of theCO snowline with ALMA Science Veri-

cation and Cycle 0 data is a major mile-stone towards our understanding of howplanetary atmospheres are assembled(see gure below).

Planetary systems are expected to formin protoplanetary discs around young pre-main-sequence stars. The diversity ofrocky and giant planets and the charac-teristics of their atmospheres are thoughtto result from a combination of the for-mation mechanism and the subsequentdynamical evolution. ALMAs currentcapabilities allow us to trace the initialsteps of the planet formation process intwo ways: by observing the growth ofsolids from micrometre-size particles to

millimetre- and centimetre-size pebbles the rst step towards the formation of

the rocky cores of planets and bystudying the transition of molecules fromices into the gas phase in the warmerregions of the discs.

(Sub-)millimetre continuum observationsare sensitive to the thermal emission frommillimetre-size particles in the midplaneof the disc. ALMA observations of theyoung protoplanetary disc surroundingthe source IRS 48 in Ophiuchus haveshown that these dust grains are concen-trated in a very specic region of the disc

with respect to that containing the micro-metre-size grains observed in the infraredwith the VISIR instrument on the VLT (seegure to the left). This spatial concentra-tion of large grains can be explained by aradial and azimuthal gas pressure dusttrap that is anticipated from numericalsimulations of discplanet interactions.

The emerging picture is that i t is planetformation feedback that perturbs the gasdistribution in the disc, creating pressuretraps that efciently conne dust. This

overcomes the growth/migration barriersto the formation of cometary-sized bodiesin the outer disc. Similar, less extreme,structures have been detected by ALMA

Planet formation

Top (A): ALMA Band 9 (450 m) continuum emiss ionimage of the protoplanetary disc around IRS 48 inOphiuchus, showing the uneven distribution of dustgrains in the outer disc (the white star shows the posi-tion of the central star and the dashed ellipse marksthe inner edge of the outer disc cavit y). Middle (B):Red and blue wings of warm carbon monoxideemission from the disc are depicted as contoursoverlaid on the continuum emission, showing thedisc rotation around the central star. Bottom (C): The

emission from small m-sized particles throughoutthe disc is shown in the orange contours (VLT/VISIRimage) overlaid on the submillimetre emission frommillimetre-size grains. (van der Marel et al., 2013)

PA

m dust

mm dust

Intensity ()

30 AU

A

B

C

Dec(arcseconds)

Dec(arcseconds)

Dec

(arcseconds)

Dec (arcseconds)

Intensity (Jy/beam)

0.00 0.05 0.11 0.16 0.21 0.27 0.32

0

0.5

0.5

0.0

1.0

0.5

0.5

0.0

1.0

0.5

0.5

0.0

1.0

1.0

65 131 196 261 327 392

1.0 0.5 0.5 1.00.0

Top: ALMA obser vations o f the proto-planetary disc around the young near-by star TW Hya. Top left: Dust contin-uum emission at 850 m; top centre:Gas phase CO emission; top right: gasphase N2H

+emission. Bottom panel:Chemical model for the radial chemi-cal structure of the midplane of thedisc. In the cooler regions of the discwhere the CO condenses onto thedust icy mantles, the gas phase abun-dance of N2H

+increases. (Qi et al.,

2013)

(arcseconds)

Continuum CO J = 32

50 AU

N2H+J = 43

3 2 1 0 1 2 3

3

2

1

0

1

2

3

(arcseconds)

Columndensity(cm2)

N(13CO) 104

Radius (AU)

B

N(N2H+)

NH 109

1011

10010

1012

1013

1014

1015

1016

1017


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The fol lowing papers were used as sources for theresearch highlights.

Crosseld, J. M. et al. 2014, Nature, 505, 654

Biller, B. A. et al. 2013, ApJ, 778, L10Bolatto, A. D. et al. 2013, Nature, 499, 450Bouch, N. M. T. et al. 2013, Science, 341, 50Burtscher, L. 2013, A&A, 558, A149Hnig, S. F. et al. 2013, ApJ, 771, 87Qi, C. et al. 2013, Science, 341, 630Riechers, D. A. et al. 2013, Nature, 496, 329van der Marel, N. et al. 2013, Science, 340, 1199

Vieira, J. D. et al. 2013, Nature, 495, 344

References

The Milky Way gli tters bright ly over ALMAs antennason the Chajnantor Plateau. E

SO/B.

Tafreshi


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This image shows the cloud of cosmic gas and

dust known as Gum 15. It is the birthplace and

home of massive young stars.


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goal of strengthening the AO expertise onParanal in preparation for the arrival ofSPHERE. Dimitri is particularly known asthe inventor of the Vortex coronagraph.In 2012/2013, Dimitri experienced a burstin the number of requests for his corona-graph (installed recently on the NACOspectrograph at the VLT, and at the LargeBinocular Telescope) thanks to its highscientic potential in the eld of direct

imaging of exoplanets and discs. He co-authored other scientic papers (one of

those led by his PhD student, J. Milli), andparticipated in the breathtaking resultpublished in Nature(Casassus et al.,2013) where ALMA observations suggestthat a protoplanet sit ting in the gap of aprotoplanetary disc is accreting gas fromthe outer disc: this would be the rst

image of the process of planetary build-ing (Press Release eso1301: ht tp://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1301/).

Dimitris expertise is acknowledged byhis participation in several expert com-mittees. Last year he helped to develop aroadmap to guide ESOs research anddevelopment plan for the PlanetaryCamera and Spectrograph of the E-ELTand participated in the denition of a

coronagraphic NASA mission piggyback-ing on the Wide-Field Infrared Survey

Telescope, using the AFTA/NobeyamaRadio Observatory telescopes. Dimitriparticipates intensively in our science life.

Together with Julien Girard and ZahedWahhaj, he promotes the Deep ImagingGroup (DIG) group and supervises stu-dents both in-house and abroad. Heis also a member of the Fellowship and

Paranal renaissance

On 25 May 1998 the rst light of the rst

VLT Unit Telescope (Antu) opened a newera for European astronomy. This year,we celebrated the 15th anniversary of thishistoric event (see ESOcast 57: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1322a/).

The VLT is today the most productiveground-based observatory, with about12 papers published per week based

on data obtained at the Paranal Observa-tory.

Science is much more than dry numbers:it is about expanding our knowledgeand comprehension of the Universe, trig-gering breathtaking discoveries suchas observing the stars orbiting the super-massive black hole at the centre of theMilky Way; the rst direct image of an

exoplanet; and providing the denitive

proof that some gamma-ray bursts arespawned by supernova explosions.

The questions we ask and the answerswe nd are tightly linked to our ability to

design, build and operate cutting-edgetelescopes and instruments. The VLTinstrument portfolio deployed over thelast 15 years is impressive: from the veryrst generation to the latest ambitious

instruments such as the spectrographKMOS (rst light in 2013), the 3D-spectro-

graph MUSE (rst light in January 2014)

or the exoplanet imager SPHERE, whichshould be followed in a few years f romnow by the commissioning of GRAVITY,ESPRESSO and MATISSE.

Science highlights

We should never forget that in order todeploy and maintain this new generationof instruments and further exploit the fullpotential of the observatory, we needhighly skilled people. Among these, ESOstaff astronomers show a high degree ofcommitment to a programme that seesthe service delivered to the community asan important part of ESOs core mission.ESO also understands that only by beingactive scientists themselves can thestaff astronomers interact with the astro-nomical community to push the instru-ments to deliver the science for whichthey were conceived and beyond.

It is one of the tasks of the Ofces for

Science to help the astronomers to excelin this challenging task of performing wellon both fronts.

This year, the ESO Of ces for Science in

Chile and Germany would like to highlightthe performance of six distinguished staffmembers, two Faculty members, twoFellows and two Students, namely DimitriMawet, Oscar Gonzlez and Julien Milliin Chile and Carlos de Breuck, ClaudiaLagos and Dominika Wylezalek in Ger-many, for their outstanding scientic per-formance, their contributions to the sci-entic life in Vitacura and Garching and

the synergies with their functional work.

Dimitri Mawet arrived at ESO from JPL/NASA as a well-established expert in theeld of high-angular resolution and high-

contrast imaging. He had the well-dened

Ofces for Science

Julien Milli, Oscar Gonzlez and Dimitri Mawet inSantiago.

Claudia Lagos, Carlos de Breuck and DominikaWylezalek in Garching.


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24/124


Themed groups were merged by having acoordinator on each side and joint collo-quia and morning coffees are regularlyorganised. This helps to spread expertiseand allow participants to acquire a com-mon language. Cross-training sessionswere held during the year and all sciencecommittees have JAO representatives.

The pay-off will come when the commonscience projects mature.

Fostering collaborations

This was also an important year inGarching, with the inauguration of the newextension to the ESO Headquarters inDecember. This will nally gather together

all ESO staff within two connected build-ings and provide more space for hostingscience visitors. There is a new auditoriumwith increased capacity for organisinglarger-scale conferences. The year saw anumber of ESO-organised workshops onboth sites and externally, including: Astrochemistry in the ALMA Era,

Copenhagen, Denmark, 2831 January

Shaping E-ELT Science and Instru-mentation, ESO, Garching, 25 Febru-ary1 March

ESO Workshop on The Deaths of Stars

and the Lives of Galaxies, Santiago,Chile, 812 April

Science with ALMA Band 2 (65

90 GHz), Bologna, Italy, 2728 May

MPA/MPE/ESO/EC Joint Conference

on The Physical Link between Galaxiesand their Halos, Garching, 2428 June

First La Serena School of Data Sci-ence, La Serena, Chile, 1216 August

ESA/ESO Science Operations 2013

Conference, Working Together inSupport of Science, ESAC-Madrid,Spain, 1013 September

ESO/NUVA/IAG Workshop on Chal-lenges in Ultraviolet Astronomy, ESO,Garching, 711 October

ESO/Observatoire de Paris Joint Work-shop on Metal Production and Distri-bution in a Hierarchical Universe,CNRS Observatoire de Paris Meudon,France, 2125 October

ALMA Community Days 2013: Pre-

paring for Cycle 2, ESO, Garching,1920 November

ESO Workshop on Deconstructing

Galaxies: Structure and Morphology inthe Era of Large Surveys, Santiago,Chile, 1822 November

MERAC prize for the best thesis from theEuropean Astronomical Society. Claudiasbackground is mainly theoretical with anemphasis on active galactic nuclei, starformation and feedback, via the develop-ment and use of semi-analytic models,but she came to ESO to expand her hori-zons and develop her taste for observa-tions.

During her rst year at ESO, Claudia

showed a remarkable development interms of her network of collaborators(within and beyond ESO) and the projectsin which she is involved. She is apply ingher skills to take on new challenges,working on proto-clusters joining theSpitzer Extragalactic Representative

Volume Survey collaboration and get-ting involved in the use of the Galaxyand Mass Assembly survey dataset.Claudia is steadily publishing in refereed

journals, and is also now reviewingpapers herself. She has been invited totalk at four conferences, including areview talk at a Ringberg workshop,something quite remarkable for someoneso young. Claudia also won an AustralianResearch Council Centre of Excellencefor All-Sky Astrophysics visitor grant tovisit Perth and Melbourne for a month inNovember. She is an enthusiastic Fellowand her passion for science is contagious.She has been co-organising the Garching

journal clubs, and is always wi lling tocontribute to the science activities at ESOHeadquarters. In order to learn aboutobservations and doing submillimetreastronomy, she joined the ESO Garching

ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) for her dutywork and started attending their weeklymeetings. Claudia was in charge of the

ALMA Helpdesk along with SuzannaRandall. She performed as contact scien-tist for one of the Cycle 1 top priorityprojects and also helped in the organisa-tion of the ALMA community days thattook place in November. Claudia alsoworked on testing the ALMA Observing

Tool and wi ll go to the ALMA Operat ionsSupport Facility in Chile to lead severalday and night shifts.

Dominika Wylezalek spent her secondyear at ESO as a PhD student supervisedby Carlos de Breuck and Joel Vernet.Dominika visited Carloss collaboratorDaniel Stern at JPL/Caltech for a fewmonths. This year, Dominika wrote two

rst author papers, and contributed to

two other refereed papers. She pre-sented a talk at the Sexten Conferenceon high-redshift clusters around radio-loud AGN and their luminosity functions:Dominika showed results on the evolu-tion of mid-infrared luminosity functionsof a large sample of high-zclusters(1.3


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This image from the Wide Field Imager on theMPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESOs La SillaObservatory in Chile, shows the bright star cl usterMessier 7, also known as NGC 6475.

Workshop on 400 Years of Stellar

Rotation, Natal, Brazil, 2126 Novem-ber

In Garching, a very full and exciting Sci-ence Day was held on June 18, includingmore than 70 short ta lks given by ESO

junior and senior astronomers (read morein Walsh et al. in the September 2013issue of The Messenger, 153). We shouldalso emphasise the contribution andengagement of ESO science staff in thenew C2PAP Computing Centre, whichemerged in the context of the new con-tractual period for the Excellence ClusterUniverse, following the partnershipbetween the Munich universities (TUM,LMU), the Munich Observatory, severalMax Planck Institu tes and ESO. This willprovide unique expertise and numericalresources for researchers to conductstate-of-the-art simulations and model-ling campaigns.

We would nally like to mention an initi-

ative at ESO to implement a developmentprogramme for Fellows. All ESO Fellowswill now go through a set of trainingmodules during their rst two years

including programme management, inter-view skills, and effective networking, alltuned to the needs of scientists. Thisdevelopment programme aims to assistFellows in developing interpersonal andemployability-related skills and compe-tencies, thus improving their careerprospects after completion of their ESOFellowship. The programme waslaunched this year and, during the nextcouple of years, we should be ableto further optimise the modules and ses-sions to provide a unique training pack-age for young astronomers.


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The APEX and La Silla Paranal Observa-tory numbers include only proposals sub-mitted during the periods of interest. Cur-rent Large Programme runs approved inprevious periods, Guaranteed Time runsand Public Survey runs are not included.

The pressure is computed as the ratiobetween the requested and the allocatedtime. The last two columns present thetotal telescope time allocations and thefractions per instrument.

The tables show the requested andscheduled resources for ESO Periods 92and 93 (P92, P93). These are specied

as lengths of time in nights, as is usual forthe La Silla Paranal Observatory and

APEX.

The call for ALMA Cycle 2 proposals wasissued at the end of the year, resulting inalmost 1400 submitted proposals. The

ALMA Proposal Review Committee willmeet ear ly in 2014 and the full statisticswill be repor ted in the 2014 AnnualReport.

Allocation of Telescope Time

The Atacama Pathnder Experiment i s located

5100 metres above sea level, at Llano de Chajnantor

in the Atacama Desert.

ESO/F.Kamphues


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Telescope

UT1

Total

UT2

Total

UT3

Total

UT4

Total

VLTI

Total

3.6-metre

Total

NTT

Total

APEX

Total

Instrument

CRIRES

FORS2

KMOS

FLAMES

UVES

ISAACVIMOS

X-shooter

HAWK-I

NACO*

SINFONI

AMBER

MIDI

PIONIER

HARPS

EFOSC2

SOFI

CHAMP+

LABOCASABOCA

SHFI

Requested

runs

128

485

162

775

121

250

371

30184

325

539

59

246

173

478

128

176

105409

64

64

89

49

138

3

157

45

70

Scheduled

runs

36

101

39

176

51

100

151

438

112

154

31

9

135

175

28

50

71149

39

39

35

25

60

1

71

15

24

Requested

time

139

531

202

872

147

264

412

53262

417

732

65

193

202

460

100

84

134319

342

342

365

208

573

6

2210

143

181

%

16.0%

60.9%

23.1%

35.8%

64.2%

7.3%35.7%

57.0%

14.2%

42.0%

43.8%

31.5%

26.4%

42.1%

100.0%

63.8%

36.2%

3.3%

12.0%5.7%

79.1%

Scheduled

time

31

87

39

156

82

129

211

553

125

183

27

3

152

182

29

26

68123

112

112

129

86

215

1

132

47

63

%

19.6%

55.7%

24.7%

38.8%

61.2%

2.5%29.1%

68.5%

14.7%

1.6%

83.7%

23.3%

21.5%

55.2%

100.0%

60.1%

39.9%

1.9%

20.7%2.8%

74.6%

Pressure

4.56

6.11

5.23

5.59

1.80

2.04

1.95

11.874.93

3.33

4.01

2.43

1.32

2.53

3.51

3.18

1.982.60

3.05

3.05

2.83

2.43

2.67

4.88

1.665.89

3.04

2.87

Total

allocation

31

111

114

255

141

132

273

563

137

204

33

3

162

197

37

38

90165

331

331

185

146

331

1

252

57

85

%

12.0%

43.4%

44.6%

51.8%

48.2%

2.2%30.8%

67.0%

16.6%

1.5%

81.9%

22.4%

23.0%

54.6%

100.0%

56.0%

44.0%

1.4%

29.7%2.1%

66.8%

* NACO was initially of fered in P92, but was removedfrom UT4 before the start of that period. The instru-

ment was then offered for the last two weeks ofP93 at UT1. This explains the very small amount ofallocated time during the reporting period. For con-venience, the instrument is listed under UT4.


28/124


Dawn at Cerro Armazones, site of the future Euro-

pean Extremely Large Telescope. ESO/S.

Brunier


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In September 2013, the 10 000th paperwas entered into the Telescope Bibli-ography (telbib), the database of refereedpublications that uses ESO data (http://telbib.eso.org). This milestone was markedby an ESO announcement, highlightingthe paper based on VIMOS data thatcrossed the 10k line (see Announcementann13073: http://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann13073/). Throughoutthe year, 840 papers by members of theESO user community were added to tel-

bib. The number of papers based on datafrom the various observing sites as wellas the total number per year can be foundin the table. An overview of publicationstatistics is also available from a dedi-cated webpage that links to the corre-sponding records in the telbibdatabase(http://www.eso.org/sci/libraries/telbib_pubstats_overview.html).

Scientic results using data from the

Very Large Telescope (VLT/VLTI) led tomore than 560 papers this year. With117 refereed publications, UVES contin-ues to be one of the most productive

VLT instruments. The X-shooter spectro-graph shows a steep increase in thenumber of publications and has produceda total of 168 papers from 2010 to 2013.For more detailed statistics of individualinstruments, please consult the report,Basic ESO Publication Statistics(http://www.eso.org/sci/libraries/edocs/ESO/ESOstats.pdf).

Over time, an increasing number of pro-grammes per paper have been used byauthors. In 1999, the rst year of VLT/VLTI

publications, 90% of the papers werebased on a single ESO programme, whilein 2013 more than half used data from atleast two programmes; 3% were evenbased on data provided by more than tendifferent programmes (see gure on the

right).

The ESO Science Archive continues to bean important resource for astronomers.By the end of the year, the telbibdatabasecontained more than 1300 papers thatwere exclusively or par tly (i.e., along withproprietary data from ESO facilities)based on archival data: this correspondsto 13% of all telbibpapers (19962013).For the VLT/VLTI, the percentage is evenhigher. In 2013, approximately a quarterof the papers made use of archival data

Publication Digest

Refereed papers us ing ESO data, 19962013.

Papers can use data from more than one facilit y.

VLT/VLTI: Papers us ing data generated by the VLTand VLTI instruments, including visitor instrumentsfor which observing time is recommended by theESO Observing Programmes Committee, e.g., VLTULTRACAM, VLTI PIONIER. La Si lla: Papers using

data generated by facilities on La Silla, incl uding visi-tor instruments for which observing time is recom-mended by the ESO OPC, e.g., NTT ULTRACAM.Papers based on data from non-ESO telescopes or

observations obtained during private periods arenot included. Survey telescopes: Papers using datagenerated by ESOs survey telescope VISTA. APEX:Papers using data generated by APEX, including vis -itor instruments for which observing time i s recom-mended by the ESO OPC, e.g., Z-Spec. Other visitorinstruments (e.g., APEX/CONDOR) are excluded.

Only papers based (entirely or par tly) on ESO APEX

time are included. ALMA: Papers using data gener-ated by ALMA. Only papers based (entirely or par tly)on European ALMA time are included.

Number of ESO programmes that provided data forVLT/VLTI papers 19992013.

VLT/VLTI La Silla Survey

telescopes

APEX ALMA Total

1996 349 349

1997 389 389

1998 405 405

1999 29 324 348

2000 52 300 342

2001 105 316 399

2002 158 289 409

2003 260 305 512

2004 341 319 590

2005 359 296 606

2006 413 279 12 640

2007 494 313 1 718

2008 486 287 7 687

2009 471 260 15 658

2010 507 273 2 27 734

2011 553 283 13 26 782

2012 612 271 30 40 17 864

2013 565 273 38 43 40 840


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(142 out of 565). In addition to raw data,the ESO Archive also contains variousdata products. Data products retrievedby researchers were used in 7% of all

VLT/VLTI publications in 2013 (40 out of565; see gure above), and in 28% of

the VLT/VLTI papers that deploy archivaldata (40 out of 142).

Facilities located on La Silla provided

data for 273 papers. The HARPS planetnder, mounted at the ESO 3.6-metre

telescope, played a major role as 73papers used its observational data. Alsoolder facilities such as FEROS, SOFI,and EFOSC2 continue to provide data fornumerous scientic papers. Non-ESO

telescopes (for instance the Swiss1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope) and

other facilities for which observing timeis not evaluated by the ESO OPC(Observing Programmes Committee) arenot included in the statistics.

VISTA, located in close proximity to theVLT/VLTI, is ESOs rst telescope dedi-cated to surveys. In the past year,38 papers were published. Almost half of

them (15) deployed data from the VVV

survey, followed by papers using datafrom the UltraVISTA (7), VIPERS (5),

VIDEO (5) VMC and VHS (3 each) andVIKING (2) surveys.

The number of APEX publ icat ions had

climbed above 170 by the end of the year.This includes only scientic results from

observations that were obtained during

ESO/APEX time and constitutes 55% of

all APEX publications that have appeared

since 2006 (171 out of 308).

The telbibdatabase also includes infor-mation about ALMA science papers. With17 science papers published in 2012 and40 this year, European ALMA time provid-ed data for 67% of all ALMA papers pub-lished until the end of 2013 (57 out of 85).

The ALMA bibliography is maintainedjointly by the librarians at ESO andNational Radio Astronomy Observatory(NRAO) as well as by the National Astro-nomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).While publications based on data from all

ALMA partners are recorded in telbib,only those based on European observingtime are counted in the ESO statistics.

This year, 27 scientic papers were fea-tured in ESO press releases. The telbibdatabase provides direct links to therespective press releases; likewise, sci-ence press releases link back to telbiband further into the ESO Archive fromwhere the relevant observing data can beretrieved. The science press releasesissued this year highlighted research froma variety of facilities. ALMA providedresults for eight papers, followed by theFORS2 spectrograph, HARPS, and theLABOCA camera, which led to ve press

releases each. An overview of all instru-ments is shown in the gure, bottom lef t.

The ESO user community is trulyworldwide. At present, telbibcontainspapers by rst authors from 60 countries

on all continents. Compared to 73 national

members in the International Astronomi-

Number of ESO programmes used per VLT/VLTIpaper.

ALMA: 8

FORS2: 5

HARPS: 5

LABOCA: 5

UVES: 4NACO: 3

SABOCA: 3

X-shooter : 3

Z-Spec: 3

FLAMES: 2

GIRAFFE: 2

EMMI: 1

SINFONI: 2

ISAAC: 1MIDI: 1

SOFI: 1VIMOS: 1

VIRCAM: 1VISIR: 1

WFI: 1Left: Number of papersper instrument featuredin ESO press releases in2013.

Right: World map of rst

authors of ESO sciencedata papers (dark blue).


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Operations

ESO/Y.

Beletsky


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major telescopes at La Silla. This is

equivalent to about 92% of the totalnumber of nights theoretically availableover the whole year. The remaining 8%were scheduled for planned engineeringand maintenance activities to guaranteethe continuous performance of the tele-scopes and instruments and include timeslots for the commissioning of new instru-ments and facilities. Out of the availablescience time for the VLT, 3% was lostdue to technical problems and about12% due to adverse weather conditions.On La Silla, bad weather accounted for

losses of about 13% and technical prob-lems for less than 1%. After unusuallyhigh loss times in 2012 due to single butsignicant failures at UT4 and the NTT,

the technical loss times in 2013 returnedto the expected levels.

VISTA delivered 295 nights of surveyobservations out of 364 scheduled nights.

The VST delivered 257 nights of surveyobservations out of 347 scheduled.

Complementary to regular VLT opera-tions, the VLT Interferometer wasscheduled for an additional 227 nights toexecute scientic observations using

baselines with either the UTs or the Aux-iliary Telescopes (ATs). The remainingnights of the year have been used fortechnical activities and for further devel-opment and commissioning of theinterferometer and its infrastructure. Inaddition to 96 engineering nights some38 nights were invested in the continued

recovery and commissioning of thePRIMA astrometry facility. Four percentof the scheduled VLTI science time waslost due to technical problems and 15%due to bad weather.

The combination of high operational ef-ciency, system reliability and up-timeof the La Silla and Paranal telescopes

and instruments for scientic observa-tions has again resulted in high scientic

productivity. We have counted 565 peer-reviewed papers that have been pub-lished in 2013 in different scientic

journals that are at least partially basedon data collected with VLT and VLTIinstruments at Paranal. In addition 38 ref-ereed papers were published referring toobservations with VISTA and the VST atParanal and 273 referring to ESO-operat-ed telescopes at La Silla. Seventy-four

The Directorate of Operations isresponsible for all science operations-related activities including the prepa-ration and execution of observing pro-grammes, the operation of the La Silla

Paranal Observatory (LPO) with itsLa Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor sites,

and the delivery of raw and calibrateddata. This involves user support, dataow management, operations techni-cal support and the development andmaintenance of a science archive asprovided by the Data Managementand Operations (DMO) Division. TheScience Archive Facility holds all thedata obtained with ESO telescopes aswell as highly processed, advancedproducts derived from them. Thedirectorate also provides ESOs contri-bution to ALMA operations throughthe European ALMA Support Centre(EASC).

Operations

The ESO Very Large Telescope at Paranaloperates with four 8.2-metre Unit Tele-scopes, a suite of ten rst generation

instruments and two second generationinstruments. The Laser Guide StarFacility (LGSF) provides an articial refer-ence star for two of the three adaptive-optics-supported instruments on the VLT.

The VLT Interferometer combines thelight of either the UTs or the ATs to feedeither one of the two interferometric rst

generation instruments with a coherentwavefront, further stabilised by the VLTIfringe tracker or the VLTI visitor instru-ment focus. VISTA, the Visible and Infra-red Survey Telescope for Astronomy,and the VST, the VLT Survey Telescope,are in regular survey operation.

On La Silla, the New Technology Tele-scope and the 3.6-metre telescope oper-ate with a suite of three instruments. TheLa Silla site supports eight further nation-al telescope projects, which include, fromOctober, the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre tele-scope.

The observatory provides the operationssupport for the Atacama Pathnder

Experiment with its 12-metre submillime-tre radio antenna located on the highplateau of Chajnantor at 5100 metres

above sea level and its suite of hetero-dyne and bolometer facility instruments,together with a number of visitor instru-ments.

For observing periods 91 and 92, thescientic community submitted respec-tively 890 and 892 Phase 1 observingproposals for the LPO including APEX.

These were the lowest numbers ofobserving proposals received in recentyears, but still demonstrate the continuedhigh demand for the ESO observingfacilities. Some 80% of the proposals arefor the Paranal site with VLT, VLTI and

VISTA.

The observatory continued its ef cient

operation through high availability andlow technical downtime of its telescopesand instruments, which are the key ele-ments for productive scientic observa-tions. In 2013 a total of 2281 nights werescheduled for scientic observations with

the four UTs at the VLT and with the three

La Silla Paranal Observatory

Spectacular view from ESOs La Silla Obser-

vatory in northern Chile. Above the round domes

of the telescopes, three of the planets in theSolar System Jupiter (top), Venus (lower left),and Mercury (lower right) are revealed af tersunset.


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33ESO Annual Report 2013

module GALACSI require an increasedspacing between the telescope-instru-ment rotator and the focal plane of thetelescope to accommodate the neces-sary additional optics. While it is easy toshift the focal plane of the telescope byslightly moving its secondary mirror, thetelescopes guiding system required amajor opto-mechanical modication to

absorb the additional optical path lengthinside the guide probe arm of the tele-scope. Commissioning the modied

Nasmyth focus meant, in practice, re-commissioning the telescope accordingto the procedures established some15 years ago during the initia l VLT com-missioning. The back focal lengthcommissioning conrmed that the modi-cation was successful and that the MUSENasmyth adaptor with its increased backfocal length performs as well as any otherfocal station.

The assembly, integration and verication

activities of the MUSE instrument itselfstarted in Chile with the arrival of the rst

48 boxes bringing the disassembledinstrument to Paranal. Shortly afterwards,the MUSE team started to re-assemblethis complex instrument, with its 24 inte-gral eld units and spectrographs, in the

new instrument integration hall atParanal. By the end of the year the MUSEteam had successfully completed thistask and prepared the instrument for itstransfer to the UT4 telescope in earlyJanuary 2014 for subsequent rst light

and commissioning.

While MUSE was being prepared for itsmove to the telescope in December,the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrastExoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) passedits provisional acceptance in Europe andis expected to arrive in boxes at Paranalearly in 2014, just as MUSE has beencleared from the new integration hall.

The UT3 focal stat ion designated forSPHERE was still occupied by ISAAC.On 12 December, ISAAC was switchedoff and became, after FORS1, the secondrst generation VLT instrument to be

decommissioned. ISAAC has been oneof the most productive of the VLT instru-ments and has contributed to some846 refereed scientic publications over

its operational lifetime from 1999 to 2013 and these will not be the last. In par-

ticular, the delta-call for proposals forISAAC in observing period 91 attractedthe attention of the ISAAC communitywith 153 proposals submitted, requestinga total of 2500 hours of observing time.From these, 800 hours of UT3 telescopetime, which had become available dueto the delays with the upgrade of the

VISIR instrument, were easily lled and

made many PIs and the observatoryhappy. It was possibly this unplannedconsolation that helped the ISAAC com-munity to accept the decommissioningof their instrument so valiantly and quietly.

Knowing that ISAAC would have to bedecommissioned in December to makeroom for SPHERE, and having realisedthat VISIR would not be ready to comeback to the UT3 telescope in period 92,an opportunity to provide the heavily over-subscribed X-shooter instrument with

more observing time was recognised.In October, X-shooter was transferred

from the Cassegrain focus of UT2 to theCassegrain focus of UT3 where it currentlyonly competes with VIMOS. X-shooter is

expected to return to UT2 once SPHEREgoes into regular operation, VIMOS startsthe envisioned large public spectroscopicsurveys, and the upgraded VISIR is readyto go on-sky again.

Telescope systems

The VLT Unit Telescopes continue tobe extremely reliable systems, despitethe fact that some of them are alreadyapproaching 15 years of continuousoperation. A dedicated obsolescenceprogramme has been initiated this yearto ensure the continued high availabilityand maintainability of the telescopes andtheir subsystems for the years to come.

This year, the biggest losses in observ ingtime related to the telescope systemswere caused by major failures of the rota-tion mechanisms of the UT4 and UT1enclosures, which led in total to a loss ofmore than ten nights of observing time.While the damaged bogie in UT4 couldbe repairedin situ, the failing bogie inUT1 had to be dismounted for a full over-haul in the Paranal workshop.

The 8-metre coating unit remained amajor source of concern for the obser-vatory. Despite intensive internal effortsto track down the root causes of thedegraded quality of the aluminium coat-ings produced on the VLT mirrors, nostable and reproducible coating processcould be re-established this year. Conse-quently, the observatory has been seek-ing external help through a consultancy

MUSE is a new and uniquely powerful instrumentto be installed at ESOs Very Large Telescope UT4(Yepun).

EricLeRoux/ServiceCommunication/UCBL/MUSE


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with a consortium of Danish companiesspecialising in large vacuum and coatingmachines. This collaboration has nowshown the rst positive results and,

despite some initial setbacks, we are con-dent that a full recovery plan can be

established and implemented in the com-ing year, followed by a new and tailoredpreventive maintenance plan for the future.

Infrastructure

Paranal Observatory critically relies onthe production of its own electrical ener-gy in so-calledisland mode, i.e., withoutconnection to any national electrical dis-tribution grid. For several years the coreof this energy production system hasbeen a multi-fuel power generatorbacked up by a set of diesel generators.

This year the generator provided theobservatory with 10 GWh of energy usingsome 6.5 million litres of liqueed petro-

leum gas (LPG), more specically, cata-lytic butane gas. To ensure that the gen-erator continued to operate reliably ascheduled overhaul was carried out thisyear after ve years of quasi-continuous

operation. Part of this major maintenanceactivity was the replacement of the heartof the generator, the turbine itself. Theturbine was successfully replaced by aspare and sent for refurbishment to theprovider. The overhaul provided, in addi-tion, the opportunity to test the generatorwith LPG based on propane as the pri-mary fuel. This test was successful andgives the observatory some additionalexibility to react to the quickly changing

availability of butane and propane gas onthe Chilean market.

The successful maintenance of the gen-erator was rewarded by a run of 1000days and nights without an unplannedpower blackout: a record that was quietlycelebrated by the observatory. But onlytwo weeks later, on 7 August and after1016 days, the unavoidable blackoutoccurred due to the failure of a criticalprogrammable logic controller (PLC) inthe control system of the power station.

Analysis of the root cause of the fai lureallowed additional improvements for thereliability and robustness of the powersystem to be identied and implemented.

The days-without-blackout counter isnow running again.

La Silla Observatory

La Silla Observatory continued to operate

successfully according to the streamlinedoperations model. This La Silla 2010+

model supports the continued operationsof the three major telescopes and theirinstrumentation, i.e., the 3.6-metre tele-scope with HARPS; the NTT with SOFI,EFOSC2 and visitor instruments; and theMPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope withFEROS and WFI.

The MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescopeoperated according to an agreement withthe Max Planck Institute for Astronomy(MPIA, Heidelberg, Germany). This agree-ment ensured the continued operationof the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescopeuntil the end of September 2013 with anESO share of 25% of the availableobserving time in response to the contin-ued requests by the community for theFEROS and WFI instruments. As of Octo-ber, ESOs operation of the MPG/ESO2.2-metre telescope ceased, but the tele-scope continues to be operated by theMPIA as an ESO-supported national tele-scope. All scientic data produced by the

MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope with theWFI, FEROS, and GROND instrumentscontinue to be ingested into the ESO Sci-ence Archive and become available to thecommunity after programme-specic

proprietary periods.

In addition the La Silla Observatory con-tinues to support scientic projects at

other national telescopes, i.e., the Danish1.54-metre, the Swiss 1.2-metreLeonhard Euler Telescope, the Rapid EyeMount, TAROT-S, the 1-metre ESOSchmidt, TRAPPIST and the ESO 1-metretelescopes.

APEX project

The Atacama Pathnder Experiment con-tinued to operate its 12-metre antennaand its suite of heterodyne and bolometerfacility instruments and visitor instru-ments. This is done in a quasi-continuous24-hour operation mode that maximisesthe exploitation of the exceptional condi-tions available at the site of Chajnantorat 5100 metres above sea level. This yeara total of 237 days and nights werescheduled for science observations with

APEX, out of which 194 could actually be

used, with close to 4000 hours of on-skyscience time.

This number is close to what wasachieved in the year before, despite thefact that the 2013 APEX science operation

was severely affected by ve snowstorms

that led to a total loss of about 22 daysof observing time. In particular, the secondhalf of June was lost for science observa-tions due to several severe snowstorms.

The high site infrastructure and the powergeneration in particular withstood the rst

snowstorm over a period of three dayswithout breakdowns. Unfortunately thesecond storm caused a failure at thepowerhouse. The high site could not bereached for several days. Therefore, thepower could only be reinstated after theantenna, the instruments and the controlbuildings had already reached the localenvironmental temperatures, causingadditional delays to the start of the sci-ence operation. With a huge effort by the

APEX staf f, as well as the visiting ArTeMiS

team, it was possible to thaw the power-house and recover the power within twodays. The rst observations with the tech-nical optical telescope could be performedafter just one day and after only one fur-ther day, science operations started againwith the recovered facility instruments.

The personnel strike at ALMA restrictedaccess to the APEX site at Chajnantor

and resulted in an additional loss of94 hours of science time.

The APEX project is a partnership

between the Max Planck Institute forRadio Astronomy (MPIfR, Bonn, Germany,50% share), ESO (27% share) and theOnsala Space Observatory (OSO,Sweden, 23% share). Considering thecontinued success of the project, the

APEX par tners had recently extended

their agreement to 31 December 2015with a provision for a further extensionuntil the end of 2017 if the per formanceof APEX is positively reviewed two years

before the expiration of this Agreement.The APEX project held a corresponding

external review at APEX Sequitor in

February and the review board []strongly recommends to extend the cur-

rent APEX agreement through 2017,

and to keep open the option to extend its

operation until at least the end of this


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decade. Considering this positive rec-ommendation, the APEX partners con-rmed during the year their shared desire

to maximise the scientic returns on their

investments in APEX and to seek an

extension to the APEX Agreement until

31 December 2017. It is expected that the

corresponding agreement will be signedin early 2014.

The competitiveness of APEX in the era of

a fully operational ALMA depends stronglyon its survey capabilities and therefore onthe results of the ongoing receiver devel-opments at the APEX partners, in particu-lar in the area of large-sized continuumcameras with several thousand detectorelements. The rst commissioning of one

of these new instruments, called ArTeMiS(Architectures de bolomtres pour des

Tlescopes grand champ de vue dans ledomaine sub-Millimtrique au Sol Bolometer arrays for wide-eld submilli-

metre ground-based telescopes) hasbeen an important step in this direction.

ArTeMiS is a bolometric camera built bythe Commissariat LEnergie Atomique(CEA in Saclay, France) and designed foroperations in the Cassegrain cabin of

APEX. It operates at three wavelengths

(450, 350 and 200 m) simultaneously. Its

4608 pixels provide fully sampled images

covering 4 2 arcminutes at 350 and

450 m, with an additional 1152 pixels

covering 2 1 arcminutes at 200 m. The

camera uses the technology of the Photo-detector Array Camera & Spectrometeronboard the Herschel spacecraft, a tech-nology developed at the CEA. During therst commissioning the focal plane was

only partially populated with a subset ofdetectors, but the instrument was alreadyoutperforming the 32-pixel SABOCAfacility instrument at APEX. To make this

exciting new instrument available to itscommunity, ESO has started negotiationswith the CEA about the terms of suchan agreement. It is expected that propos-als for the fully commissioned ArTeMiSinstrument will be accepted for the secondhalf of 2014.

ArTeMiS instrumentinstalled in theCassegrain cabin of the

APEX te lescope.

ArTeMiSteam/ESO

First ArTeMiS science obse rvations of NGC 6334

(The Cats Paw Nebula). The picture shows the glowdetected at a wavelength of 350 m coming from

dense clouds of interstellar dust grains. The new

observations from ArTeMiS show up in orange andhave been superimposed on a view of the sameregion taken in near-infrared light by ESOs VISTAtelescope at Paranal.

ArTeMiSteam/Ph.Andr,M.Hennem

ann,V.Revretetal./ESO/J.Emerson/VISTAAcknowledgment:C

ambridgeAstronomicalSurveyUnit

35ESO Annual Report 2013


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ESO/B.

Tafreshi(twanight.org)


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The Atacama Pathnder Experiment at Chajnantor,

in the Atacama Desert, Chile.


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HD 163296, a ve-Myr-old Herbig Ae star

at a distance of 122 pc.

These channel velocity maps unveil, forthe rst time at submillimetre wavelengths,

details of vertical structure, revealing boththe back and the front side of a ared

disc in Keplerian rotation (de Gregorio-Monsalvo et al. 2013, A&A, 557, 133).

A par

eso annual report 2013

Documents