Belgian participation

A founding member of ESO, Belgium contributes to the organisation on a pro rata basis according to its GDP (Gross National Product). In 2011, its participation was 3.07 %: the EUR 4.033 billion budget is managed by Belspo, the Federal Public Service for Science Policy Planning. Furthermore, the Belgian state approved the investment of EUR 13.5 billion over 10 years to finance the E-ELT project. Its construction has already had an industrial impact. Thanks to its contribution to ESO, Belgian astronomers and astrophysicists have the opportunity to access ESO’s telescopes. But for this purpose, they have to submit proposals for the use of the instruments with a view to studying their preferred stars and being selected. These projects compete twice a year with some thousand demands for observations from all the other European researchers. It is therefore necessary to establish original and convincing projects with, of course, great potential to make knowledge progress.

Some 20 Belgian astronomers and engineers, including several from Liège, are employed at ESO’s headquarters in Garching (near Munich) or in the observatories in Chile. The researchers at the Institute of Astrophysics – now established on the Sart Tilman campus – have always put great effort into using the observation system developed by ESO and are also required to play a role in the scientific selection committees for observation programmes or other authorities. The Liège-based astrophysicist Emmanuel Jehin, who worked as an ESO astronomer for seven years at the Paranal observatory and who takes care of the Liège TRAPPIST telescope at La Silla, continues to sing the praises of the high-performance tools made available to researchers by ESO, and stresses the appeal of ESO for astronomers from Liège: "A large proportion of the astronomers from Liège have participated in the ESO adventure, either as students, "coopérants", postdoctoral students (within the framework of the ESO Fellowship programme) or astronomers under contracts lasting several months or even sometimes many years. In fact, some of them have never left the organisation and are in managerial positions, which bears witness to Liège’s know-how.”
ULg’s AGO Department has several teams of researchers involved in the observation campaigns in Chile:
- The EASO Group (Extragalactic Astrophysics and Space Observations), led by Jean Surdej, focuses especially on gravitational mirages.
- The ASTA Group (Stellar Astrophysics & Asteroseismology), led by Marc-Antoine Dupret, focuses on the behaviour and the environment of the stars, especially for the detection of exoplanets.
- Pierre Magain’s AIP Group (Astrophysics and Image Processing), which endeavours to improve the quality of the images taken, is an important player in observational cosmology, for the analysis of exoplanets, the study of comets and asteroids.
- GAPHE (High-Energy Astrophysics Group), under the direction of Gregor Rauw, focuses on the universe’s most violent and spectacular phenomena; it studies massive stars and interactions with their environment.
- The LPAP (Laboratory for Atmospheric and Planetary Physics), led by Denis Grodent, seeks to understand the auroral processes on giant planets such as Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus.

The researchers from Liège are already very satisfied with the possibilities offered by the VLT/VLTI observatory and they are impatient to see the first lights of E-ELT in 2022. Nevertheless, some have regretted ESO’s decision to gradually abandon the La Silla site which marked the beginnings of the adventure and which continues to serve a purpose thanks to telescopes of a more modest size that are used to observe tens and even hundreds of relatively bright stars such as certain types of star. Nowadays, it is very difficult to obtain observation time on the ESO telescopes to undertake these in-depth programmes because these big telescopes aren't adapted. ESO had to make a choice by giving priority to what will be the biggest telescope in the world. In order to obtain the EUR 200 million missing from its E-ELT budget, ESO also accepted Brazil’s membership. It will soon be the 15th member following Brasilia’s ratification. We may well wonder when the expansion of the European organisation will stop: China has already knocked on the door of its headquarters in Garching... What is worrying is that the arrival of new members and the reduction in the number of telescopes will clearly mean a reduction in the observation time available to everyone.