New Swedish delegate on the ESO Council

ESO is an international organisation for observational astronomy with 16 European member countries. The goal of ESO is to advance humanity’s understanding of the Universe by working with and for the astronomy community, providing it with world-leading telescopes (placed in Chile). Sweden has been a member of ESO since its founding in 1962 and have two delegate seats on its ruling body (the ESO council). From 2026, Jesper Sollerman and Camilla Jakobsson (from the Swedish Science Council) will be the Swedish representatives on the council. Jesper replaces professor Sofia Feltzing (Lund University) who has been on the council the last six years.

The telescopes in Chile are used for many different studies within astronomy, such as stars, supernovae, and galaxies. With the many different telescopes run by ESO astronomer can observe electromagnetic radiation across a wide spectrum (from ultraviolet light to radio). Among other things, the ESO Council decides on when and how new telescopes and the instruments connected to them will be built.

This is an exciting task. ESO represents a very successful example of international research collaboration, says Jesper Sollerman. ESO has been really important for Swedish astronomy for over 60 years, and will without a doubt continue to be so also in the future.

There are more scientists at the Department of Astronomy who have roles within ESO. Angela Adamo sits on the ESO Science Council and Ragnhild Lunnan is a member of its Users Committee.

ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is currently under construction in Chile’s Atacama Desert, a unique place on Earth to observe the skies. When it sees first technical light later this decade, the ELT will revolutionise what we know about our Universe and make us rethink our place in the cosmos.

More information

Read more about ESO on their webpage.

Read more about ELT.