One of the most powerful observing instruments on Earth, the Very Large Telescope, will join the search for potentially habitable planets around the Alpha Centauri star system.
The survey will take place in 2019 under the terms of an agreement signed by the European Southern Observatory, which operates the VLT in Chile, and by the Breakthrough Initiatives.
The Breakthrough Initiatives are funded by such luminaries as Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The effort includes in a radio search for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, known as Breakthrough Listen; and a plan to send swarms of nano-probes through the Alpha Centauri system, known as Breakthrough Starshot.
For months, the Breakthrough team has been working out the details for a campaign to look for worlds around Alpha Centauri, informally known as Breakthrough Watch. Such observations would complement Breakthrough Starshot.
