Gianluca Chiozzi (ESO)

Gianluca Chiozzi Colloquium: ESO Observing Facilities

Marsfield Lecture Theatre

Abstract

ESO's mission is to provide its astronomical community with worldwide competitive ground-based observing capabilities to probe the Universe from its first billion year to the present time. Today, ESO operates the La Silla Paranal Observatory (VLT, VLTI, APEX) and participates in the ALMA collaboration, providing some of the world's largest and most advanced observing facilities at three sites in Northern Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At the same time, the E-ELT (a 40m-class optical/near infrared telescope) is under construction near Paranal.
This talk will provide an overview of the current and future capabilities of the telescopes and their instrumentation. It will focus on the engineering challenges and on the technological evolution of the control systems trough the past 20 years and looking toward the future. Keeping telescopes and instruments in operation for decades, while improving their capabilities and at the same developing new ones, requires an effective obsolescence management and an evolutionary technological roadmap.