Michaël Gillon, astronomer and ERC grantee from the University of Liege, stunned the world with his recent discovery of seven potentially inhabitable planets orbiting Trappist-1 star, some 40 light years from Earth. 

These days at the European Southern Observatory of Paranal (ESO) in Chile, Dr Gillon launched the first telescope funded with the ERC grant. The telescope, named Europa, is the first of four instruments that will help in search of exoplanets in the framework of Speculoos project. These are the first images of planets and galaxies produced by “Europa.”