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European Southern Observatory

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
European Southern Observatory
Formation1962
Typeresearch organization for astronomy
Membership
14 member countries
Websitewww.eso.org

The European Southern Observatory (ESO, officially called the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere), is a research group for astronomy, made up of fourteen countries from Europe. Made in 1962 to give state-of-the-art facilities and a view the Southern Sky to European astronomers, it is well known for using some of the largest and most advanced telescopes in the world, such as the New Technology Telescope (NTT), the telescope that helped create active optics technology, and the VLT (Very Large Telescope), made of four 8-meter class telescopes and four 1.8-m Auxiliary Telescopes.

Member countries

[change | change source]
Country Accession
 Belgium 1962
 Germany 1962
 France 1962
 Netherlands 1962
 Sweden 1962
 Denmark 1967
  Switzerland 1981
 Italy 24 May 1982
 Portugal 27 June 2000
 United Kingdom 8 July 2002
 Finland 1 July 2004
 Spain 1 July 2006
 Czech Republic 1 January 2007
 Austria 1 July 2008
 Poland 28 October 2014
 Ireland 28 September 2018