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The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is an intergovernmental organization that designs, constructs and operates powerful ground-based observing facilities for astronomy. It currently operates three unique world class observing sites in the Atacama Desert region of Chile and is building the Extremely Large Telescope, which will be the largest optical/near-infrared telescope in the world. 

Professor Xavier Barcons, the Director General of ESO, was a guest on site at ITER on Friday 15 September. After exchanges with management and an extended tour of the worksite, he delivered a guest lecture to hundreds of members of the ITER community who were present in the amphitheatre or logged on remotely.

"What we can say, to start, is that we both work with plasmas, although many orders of magnitude apart in size," said ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi in his introduction of Professor Barcons. "And there are other things that we share—we are delivering research infrastructures at the frontier of science and technology, we are unique in our fields, and we face common challenges not only in engineering and technology ... but also in procurement, administration and staffing issues such as diversity. Beyond the pleasure of welcoming Professor Barcons today, we also hope to find areas where we can assist one another."

You can learn more about the European Southern Observatory here.