Breakthrough Watch + ESO Announce "First Light" Exoplanet Search at Very Large Telescope

Breakthrough Watch, the global astronomical program looking for Earth-like planets around nearby stars, and the European Southern Observatory (ESO), Europe’s foremost intergovernmental astronomical organization, announced “first light” on a newly-built planet-finding instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope in the Atacama desert, Chile.

The instrument, called NEAR (Near Earths in the AlphaCen Region), is designed to hunt for exoplanets in our neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri, within the “habitable zones” of its two sun-like stars, where water could potentially exist in liquid form. It has been developed over the last three years and was built in collaboration with the University of Uppsala in Sweden, the University of Liège in Belgium, the California Institute of Technology in the US, and Kampf Telescope Optics in Munich, Germany. Learn more at

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