On 1 July, the UK officially became a member of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO runs the four 8.2 m and smaller telescopes making up the Very Large Telescope array in the Atacama desert, and also the La Silla observatory, Chile. Future projects include the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) and the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL). The UK is the 10th member of ESO. The others are Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland.
