14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, the Federative Republic of Brazil has signed the formal accession agreement that will open the way for the country to become a Member State of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Once the Brazilian government ratifies it, Brazil will become the fifteenth Member State and also the first one from outside Europe.
At the ceremony held yesterday in Brasilia (the capital), Sergio Machado Rezende – the Brazilian Minister of Science and Technology, and Tim de Zeeuw – the ESO Director General, signed the formal accession agreement that will make Brazil a Member State of the European Southern Observatory.
This event was the logical step after the unanimous approval by the ESO Council during an extraordinary meeting on 21 December 2010.
This agreement means accession to an international convention, so it must now be submitted to the Brazilian Parliament for ratification, and after it passes, the ESO Member States will be Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The European Southern Observatory has successfully worked with South America for a while now, ever since 1963, when Chile was selected as the best site for its observatories, but this is the first time that a non-European country has joined ESO as a Member State.
Tim de Zeeuw said that “the membership of Brazil will give the vibrant Brazilian astronomical community full access to the most productive observatory in the world and open up opportunities for Brazilian high-tech industry to contribute to the European Extremely Large Telescope project.
“It will also bring new resources and skills to the organization at the right time for them to make a major contribution to this exciting project,” he adds.
Rezende stated that “joining ESO will give new impetus to the development of science, technology and innovation in Brazil as part of the considerable efforts our government is making to keep the country advancing in these strategic areas.”
As for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) telescope, its design phase was recently finished and a major review was conducted by an international panel of independent experts, who scrutinized every aspect of this titanesque project.
The panel concluded that the E-ELT project is technically ready to enter the construction phase, so its launch is planned for 2011.
Once and when operations start early in the next decade, the giant telescope will be accessible to European, Brazilian and Chilean astronomers.
Laurent Vigroux, the president of ESO’s Council, concluded that “astronomers in Brazil will benefit from collaborating with European colleagues, and naturally from having observing time at ESO's world-class observatories at La Silla and Paranal, as well as on ALMA, which ESO is constructing with its international partners.”