The European Southern Observatory said in a statement that all of its employees are safe and unharmed following the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck central Chile on February 27, 2010, and that none of its telescopes were damage...

Among the international astronomical observatories in Chile is the Gemini Observatory (South) at 2,700 meters (8,858 ft) elevation on Cerro Pachón (a mountain in the Chilean Andes) and the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very ...

The European Southern Observatory just released a very pretty picture of the nebula NGC 346. Check this out: I strongly urge you to click that to ennebulanate to the higher-res version; I had to shrink and compress it quite a bit t...

UK planetary science will be among those to benefit from an exceptional award of 82 nights of European Southern Observatory (ESO) telescope time made to an international team of astronomers. The team will study how near-Earth astero...

Need a new desktop image? Yeah, the ESO’s got you covered. Holy Haleakala. Click to Orionate. That jaw-dropper is the view of Orion as seen by the European Southern Observatory’s phenomenal VISTA telescope, a 4.1 meter telescope eq...

You’ve undoubtedly seen the smudge of the Orion Nebula hanging just below his belt thousands of times, but the most beautiful image yet of the celestial body was just released Wednesday. The European Southern Observatory’s new VISTA...

Using the straightforwardly named Very Large Telescope in Cerro Paranal, Chile, members of the European Southern Observatory have discovered the a star 116 times the size of our sun. It's nothing short of remarkable . According ...

This glowing stellar nursery is home to the most massive star yet found in the Milky Way galaxy. Captured by the European Southern Observatory’s 27 f00t-diameter Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal, Chile, the image above combines...

There are two cool stories circulating today on the theme of discovering new places in the cosmos. The first one is from the European Southern Observatory and concerns the extrasolar planet known as GJ 1214b, located in our relativ...

Astronomers with the European Southern Observatory have just revealed the first images from their new telescope called VISTA: the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy. If ever there was an appropriate name for a ’scop...

What does a star on the edge of death look like? Perhaps not what you think: This series of images [as usual, click to embiggen], from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, will take some ’splainin. Hang on. A s...

An amazing haul of 32 new planets was revealed today. The alien worlds orbiting other stars were all discovered by a planet-hunting instrument at the European Southern Observatory 2,400 metres above sea level in Chile's Atacama des...

WASHINGTON — Astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop. Scientists using European Southern Observatory telescopes didn't...

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) have been celebrating the International Year of Astronomy in fine style: instead of insisting on how awesome astronomy is they've decided to simply show people so they can see for themselves. ...

This is what I ended up with after just a minute of playing around with Gigagalaxy Zoom, a project by the European Southern Observatory.  Start with the Milky Way galaxy as seen by the naked eye, zoom into a section of it, then zoom...

I have been behind in my cool-astronomy-posting, and haven’t mentioned the GigaGalaxy Zoom project, an ambitious and totally awesome three-part image series by the European Southern Observatory. The first part was to create a magnif...

A huge new image of the Lagoon Nebula, covering an area of the sky eight times larger than the full moon, has been released by the European Southern Observatory. Located four to five thousand light-years away in the direction of Sag...

After a 17-mile trek up to a plateau in the Chilean Andes, scientists installed the first of 66 giant antennae on the European Southern Observatory’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope this week. The anten...

click for ginormous photo > This is the entire celestial sphere as seen from the best vantage points on Earth. The 800-million pixel image comes from the European Southern Observatory’s GigaGalaxyZoom project. The Milky Way, viewed...

French photographers have stitched together a series of images to create a 360 degree panoramic view of the Milky Way galaxy, according to Wired. The project available from the European Southern Observatory lets you visit any part o...