Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2019

18 SPACE CHRONICLES most of the world’s current large tel- escopes. The ESO 3.6-metre tele- scope is now home to the world’s foremost extrasolar planet hunter in a ground-based observatory: the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), a spectrograph with unrivalled precision. The President enjoyed a tour of La Silla’s facilities. “We are stardust,” exclaimed the President during the event. “Today Chile is the world cap- ital of astronomy and for this reason to be at La Silla Observatory today is very special.” The observatory’s reg- ular astronomical inhabitants were also on site to take advantage of ex- isting observing infrastructure in novel ways. Seven projects with sci- entific or outreach goals took place during the eclipse, with some using pre-existing telescopes at La Silla, such as the NTT, ExTrA, TAROT and REM, and others using temporary se- tups. This follows a long tradition of using eclipses for scientific observa- tions, such as the famous confirma- tion of General Relativity which took place 100 years ago. The partial eclipse started at 15:23:50 CLT, with totality lasting 1 minute and 52 seconds from the La Silla summit, between 16:39:23 CLT and 16:41:15 CLT. The partial eclipse ended at 17:47:16 CLT, shortly be- fore sunset. S pectacular shot of the solar corona made by Petr Horálek. [ESO/P. Horálek] On the right, detail of the main protuberances visible on 2 July. [ESA–CESAR team] I n the background, all the phases of the eclipse photographed by Petr Horálek. [ESO/P. Horálek]