On. Oct. 5, 1962, the European Southern Observatory was born!
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is an intergovernmental research organization made up of 16 nations that work together to study the southern sky. Before ESO, all the major ground-based telescopes in the world were in the Northern Hemisphere. So ESO built some really big and really awesome telescopesin Chile.
a view of eight domed buildings atop a mountain
La Silla Observatory located in Chile is the original site and home to three of the telescopes operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), established in 1962. (Image credit: European Southern Observatory)
With these telescopes, scientists have discovered exoplanets like Proxima b, they've found the oldest star in the Milky Way, and they've shown that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.
