A talk given from the VLT on Paranal, what we do as a support astronomer working at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. Followed by a live showing of the control room, the telescope platform and with a bit of luck inside one of the telescopes using a tablet.

Gaia is a European Space Agency satellite that has been mapping individual stars in our Milky Way Galaxy since its launch in 2013. I will explain how its 3 trillion measurements of 2 billion stars is causing a revolution in astronomy. Science highlights will include the most recently discovered black hole (Gaia BH3) and how […]