World's Biggest Eye on the Sky to be Located on Armazones, Chile

On 26 April 2010, the ESO Council selected Cerro Armazones as the baseline site for the planned 42-metre European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). Cerro Armazones is a mountain at an altitude of 3060 metres in the central part of Chile’s Atacama Desert, some 130 kilometres south of the town of Antofagasta and about 20 kilometres from Cerro Paranal, home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope.
“This is an important milestone that allows us to finalise the baseline design of this very ambitious project, which will vastly advance astronomical knowledge,” says Tim de Zeeuw, ESO’s Director General. “I thank the site selection team for the tremendous work they have done over the past few years.”
ESO’s next step is to build a European extremely large optical/infrared telescope (E-ELT) with a primary mirror 42 metres in diameter. The E-ELT will be “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — the only such telescope in the world. ESO is drawing up detailed construction plans together with the community. The E-ELT will address many of the most pressing unsolved questions in astronomy, and may, eventually, revolutionise our perception of the Universe, much as Galileo's telescope did 400 years ago. The final go-ahead for construction is expected at the end of 2010, with with the start of operations planned for 2018......

Space Shuttle: The Time-Lapse Movie

A team of photographers captures Discovery's long journey to the launch pad.

Last year while training for his STS-131 space shuttle mission, astronaut Alan Poindexter was looking for a different way to document Discovery's next-to-last flight, something that had never been done. So he turned to a couple of friends—Scott Andrews, a photographer and technical advisor to Canon who has shot every shuttle launch but two, and Stan Jirman, a software engineer for Apple. They came up with a winning suggestion: What about a time-lapse video that captured the whole process of getting a shuttle ready for launch?
The result, produced in collaboration with Andrews’ son Philip (a photojournalist himself), is a stunning, one-of-a-kind, four-minute chronicle of Discovery’s trip from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the pad, beginning with the "rollover" to the Vehicle Assembly Building on February 22 and ending with the STS-131 launch on April 5. (See the video at right.)

With the help of everyone from shuttle technicians to crane operators to escorts (86-year-old NASA retiree Charlie Parker was particularly valuable in squiring Andrews’ team around) the photographers positioned multiple cameras—up to nine at any one time—inside the cavernous assembly building to click away while the orbiter, fuel tank, and twin solid rocket boosters were “stacked” for launch.

Scott Andrews figures the finished video represents tens of thousands of individual frames and at least 100 hours of shooting, using the highest-resolution digital single-lens-reflex cameras on the market. Jirman did the color correction, which took a week alone.

When it was done, Poindexter had what he'd wanted—a unique visual record of an intricate workflow that’s been going on at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for nearly 30 years—and, with the shuttle's impending retirement, is about to come to an end ******

Spectacular Moon Photo Caught Over Chile


The huge full moon setting in the high Chilean desert dominates a spectacular new photo caught in Chile just as astronomers closed up their observatory after a long, busy night.

The photo, released Monday, shows a dazzling full moonas it sets behind the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile's Atacama Desert while dawn approaches, coloring the sky with deep hues of blue and purple. The moon was last full on May 27 and appears larger than normal in the photograph, but it is actually an optical illusion.

Contrary to what one may think, this picture is no montage," wrote officials with the European Southern Observatory (ESO), which operates the VLT, in a statement. "The moon appears large because it is seen close to the horizon and our perception is deceived by the proximity of references on the ground

ESO staff member Gordon Gillet caught this view of the moon illusion from a distance of about 8.6 miles (14 km) from the VLT observatory using a 500-mm telephoto lens. He snapped the photo from the nearby peak of Cerro Amazones, the future home of the enormous 137-foot (42-meter) European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), which would be the world's largest telescope when complete in 2018...........

Total Solar Eclipse of 2010 July 11

On Sunday, 2010 July 11, a total eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses Earth's southern Hemisphere. The path of the Moon's umbral shadow crosses the South Pacific Ocean where it makes no landfall except for Mangaia (Cook Islands) and Easter Island (Isla de Pascua). The path of totality ends just after reaching southern Chile and Argentina. The Moon's penumbral shadow produces a partial eclipse visible from a much larger region covering the South Pacific and southern South America

Eastern Island is full with astronomers from all parts of the World, good luck to all of them , next one there in 500 years they say

The Eclipse believe should be seen where I am, between 4pm and 5 pm local time , but at the moment we have rain ..

Will post some photos from our TV Channels or from somebody else if available

Blackout: Thousands watch total solar eclipse on Easter Island

It is one of the solar system's most awe-inspiring sights.

And last night thousands of tourists gathered to witness a stunning solar eclipse on Chile's Easter Island.
The eclipse started at 7pm BST about 440 miles south-east of Tonga,