Gonzalo Munoz-Sanchez and Evangelia Christodoulou traveled this November to Chile, and more specifically to the ESO’s Very Large Telescope facility in Paranal. The purpose of their trip was to get the data for a project that was awarded ~1.5 nights at the very competitive FORS2 instrument. The goal was to obtain spectra for a number of selected ASSESS targets in low-metallicity galaxies, in order to derive the physical parameters and mass-loss rates for some extreme Luminous Blue Variables and Yellow Supergiants.
The weather was not very cooperative. Thin clouds were present during the first (full) night and thicker clouds were present in the second (and actually blocked the observations for the second half – fortunately not the one assigned to the program). Despite this, they managed to collect valuable data for the majority of their targets along with a significant number of similar sources in the Magellanic Clouds. These are important to complete their PhD theses.
Time to work on the data now!
Night view from Paranal, Chile. 
Gonzalo Munoz-Sanchez actively acquiring data. 
Evangelia Christodoulou in observing mode. 
ESO/VLT and the Magellanic Clouds. 
Evangelia Christodoulou at VLT in the morning light. 
In front of one of the biggest telescopes in the world. 
Evangelia and Gonzalo with the telescope operator and support astronomer at the end of the observing run.
A few days later, Gonzalo also gave a talk at ESO Santiago Office on “The luminous, red supergiant [W60] B90: a Betelgeuse analog in the LMC”.
Image credits: Gonzalo Munoz-Sanchez (upper part) and Evgenia Koumpia (bottom panel).