Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2019

34 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019 SPACE CHRONICLES The instrument, called NEAR (Near Earths in the AlphaCen Region), is designed to hunt for exoplanets in our neighbouring star system, Al- pha Centauri, within the “habitable zones” of its two Sun-like stars, where water could potentially ex- ist in liquid form. It has been de- veloped over the last three years and was built in collaboration with the University of Uppsala in Sweden, the University of Liège in Belgium, the California Institute of Technol- ogy in the US, and Kampf Telescope Optics in Munich, Germany. Since 23 May ESO’s astronomers at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) performed a ten-day observing run to establish the presence or ab- sence of one or more planets in the star system. Observations ended on 11 June. NEAR instrument sees first light B reakthrough Watch, the global astronomical program looking for Earth-like planets around nearby stars, and the European Southern Observatory (ESO), Eu- rope’s foremost intergovernmen- tal astronomical organisation, an- nounced “first light” on a newly- built planet-finding instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope in the At- acama Desert, Chile. by ESO