A Cork Astronomy Club public lecture held in UCC’s Civil Engineering Building
Dr Paul Callanan, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCC and honorary member of Cork Astronomy Club, gave his annual lecture. His topic – “The European Southern Observatory at 60”. Based in Chile’s Atacama Desert, it’s where Irish and other European astronomers can observe the southern sky. Prof Paul Callanan was a leading campaigner for Ireland to join the ESO and showed many startling images, and outlined the leading role the ESO plays in adaptive optics, and intricate system for stripping out the twinkle from objects viewed by ground-based telescopes.
Above, Prof Paul Callanan in UCC’s Crawford Observatory, and right, an ESO image of an exoplanet and star.
Another field in which ESO leads is the prodigous feat of obtaining images of exoplanets, Paul told us, illustrated by the slide shown above.