A talk about facilities in the Southern Hemisphere serving astronomical issues to advance humanity's understanding of the Universe

Abstract

The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) was founded as an intergovernmental organisation 60 years ago with the mission of building and operating world-class ground-based telescopes and to foster cooperation for astronomy. A collection of world-leading telescopes have been developed since then, enabling many scientific discoveries and breakthroughs in our understanding of the Universe. Today ESO operates the world's most powerful optical/infrared observatory – the Very Large Telescope VLT and its Interferometer the VLTI – in Cerro Paranal,  the unique sub/millimeter radio interferometer observatory ALMA (together with our international partners) in the Llanod e Chajnantor, both of them in the Atacama desert in Chile. We are also building the 40-m diameter ELT (Extremely Large Telescope) in Cerro Armazones (near Paranal), for which we expect to do the first scientific observations in 2028. ESO will also host in the Paranal/Armazones territory the southern part of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), the first observatory operating at Very-High-Energy gamma rays. I will present these facilities, highlight some breakthroughs enabled by them, and put our activities and wishes in the context of our Vision: to advance humanity's understanding of the Universe by working with and for the astronomy community, providing it with world-leading facilities.