[RayChuang88]

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) was built at the Atacama Desert in Chile for these reasons: 1) They needed a modern observatory to cover the southern sky, 2) the location had some of the lowest interference from the refraction of the atmosphere due its high altitude and extremely low humidity and 3) the observatories could be reached from Europe in under a day's flight time. In fact, they're building even more telescopes at that location.

But now that new telescopes that can scan the entire sky from one location will come online within the next decade, and the launches of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite, the ESA Herschel infrared satellite, and the James Webb Space Telescope should finally get the tools to prove or disprove if we have a brown dwarf companion to our Sun.

[SunkenCiv]

Even if it’s not found, a bigger, better instrument will always be in the works. :’) There’s data suggesting the existence of a large unknown outer planet or more distant companion to the Sun, but the various theorists cite different data depending on what they theorize. ;’) In Britain I think it’s in vogue to just dump on all of it — one astronomer I think from there went so far to write that the planet X problem was psychological. And the Brits (and some NE US academics) also resist the idea of sudden mass extinctions due to impact, and there’s some overlap between that and Nemesis.