This region of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) glows in striking colours in this image captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The region, known as LHA 120-N 180B — N180 B for short — is a type of nebula known as an H II region (pronounced…
ESO’s VLT Working As 16-Meter Telescope For First Time
One of the original design goals of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) was for its four Unit Telescopes (UTs) to work together to create a single giant telescope. With the first light of the ESPRESSO spectrograph using the four-Unit-Telescope mode of the VLT, this milestone has now been reached [1]. After extensive preparations by the ESPRESSO consortium…
MUSE Probes Uncharted Depths of Hubble Ultra Deep Field
The MUSE HUDF Survey team, led by Roland Bacon of the Centre de recherche astrophysique de Lyon (CNRS/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1/ENS de Lyon), France, used MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer/ to observe the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (heic0406/, a much-studied patch of the southern constellation of Fornax (The Furnace). This resulted in the deepest…
Image Of The Day: Monster Image Of The Fornax Galaxy Cluster
Countless galaxies vie for attention in this monster image of the Fornax Galaxy Cluster, some appearing only as pinpricks of light while others dominate the foreground. One of these is the lenticular galaxy NGC 1316. The turbulent past of this much-studied galaxy has left it with a delicate structure of loops, arcs and rings that…
Photo Of The Day: VISTA Peeks Through The Small Magellanic Cloud’s Dusty Veil
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy, the more petite twin of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). They are two of our closest galaxy neighbours in space — the SMC lies about 200,000 light-years away, just a twelfth of the distance to the more famous Andromeda Galaxy. Both are also rather peculiarly shaped,…
Stellar Lab in Sagittarius
The small smattering of bright blue stars in the upper left of this vast new 615 megapixel ESO image is the perfect cosmic laboratory in which to study the life and death of stars. Known as Messier 18 this star cluster contains stars that formed together from the same massive cloud of gas and dust.…
Unique Fragment From Earth’s Formation Returns After Billions of Years In Cold Storage
In a paper to be published today in the journal Science Advances, lead author Karen Meech of the University of Hawai`i’s Institute for Astronomy and her colleagues conclude that C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS) formed in the inner Solar System at the same time as the Earth itself, but was ejected at a very early stage. Their…
First Light for the Four Laser Guide Star Facility on ESO’s Very Large Telescope
On April 26, 2016, ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile hosted an event to mark the first light for the four powerful lasers that form a crucial part of the adaptive optics systems on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Attendees were treated to a spectacular display of cutting-edge laser technology against the majestic skies of Paranal. These…
Planet Formation in Earth-Like Orbit Around a Young Star
The star TW Hydrae is a popular target of study for astronomers because of its proximity to Earth (only about 175 light-years away) and its status as an infant star (about 10 million years old). It also has a face-on orientation as seen from Earth. This gives astronomers a rare, undistorted view of the complete…
Sharpest View Ever of Dusty Disc Around Aging Star
As they approach the ends of their lives many stars develop stable discs of gas and dust around them. This material was ejected by stellar winds, whilst the star was passing through the red giant stage of its evolution. These discs resemble those that form planets around young stars. But up to now astronomers have not…
A Star’s Moment In The Spotlight
The glowing region in this new image from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope is a reflection nebula known as IC 2631. These objects are clouds of cosmic dust that reflect light from a nearby star into space, creating a stunning light show like the one captured here. IC 2631 is the brightest nebula in the Chamaeleon Complex, a…
The Frigid Flying Saucer
The international team, led by Stephane Guilloteau at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, France, measured the temperature of large dust grains around the young star 2MASS J16281370-2431391 in the spectacular Rho Ophiuchi star formation region, about 400 light-years from Earth. This star is surrounded by a disc of gas and dust—such discs are called protoplanetary…
The Milky Way’s Clean And Tidy Galactic Neighbor
IC 1613 is a dwarf galaxy in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). This VST image [1] shows the galaxy’s unconventional beauty, all scattered stars and bright pink gas, in great detail. German astronomer Max Wolf discovered IC 1613’s faint glow in 1906. In 1928, his compatriot Walter Baade used the more powerful 2.5-metre…
First Light For Future Black Hole Probe
Zooming in on black holes is the main mission for the newly installed instrument GRAVITY at ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. During its first observations, GRAVITY successfully combined starlight using all four Auxiliary Telescopes. The large team of European astronomers and engineers, led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, who…
Aging Star’s Weight Loss Secret Revealed
VY Canis Majoris is a stellar goliath, a red hypergiant, one of the largest known stars in the Milky Way. It is 30-40 times the mass of the Sun and 300 000 times more luminous. In its current state, the star would encompass the orbit of Jupiter, having expanded tremendously as it enters the final…
The Birth Of Monsters
Just counting the number of galaxies in a patch of sky provides a way to test astronomers’ theories of galaxy formation and evolution. However, such a simple task becomes increasingly hard as astronomers attempt to count the more distant and fainter galaxies. It is further complicated by the fact that the brightest and easiest galaxies…
The Glowing Halo Of A Zombie Star
Led by Christopher Manser, a PhD student at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, the team used data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and other observatories to study the shattered remains of an asteroid around a stellar remnant — a white dwarf (called SDSS J1228+1040) [1]. Using several instruments, including the Ultraviolet…
First Observations From SEPIA
Installed on APEX earlier this year, SEPIA [1] is sensitive to light with wavelengths in the range 1.4-1.8 millimetres [2]. The exceptional observing conditions on the extremely dry Chajnantor Plateau in northern Chile mean that, although this light is blocked by water vapour in the atmosphere at most places on Earth, SEPIA is still able…
VISTA Discovers New Component Of Milky Way
The Vista Variables in the Vía Láctea Survey (VVV) [1] ESO public survey is using the VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory to take multiple images at different times of the central parts of the galaxy at infrared wavelengths [2]. It is discovering huge numbers of new objects, including variable stars, clusters and exploding stars…
Looking Deeply into the Universe in 3D
The MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope has given astronomers the best ever three-dimensional view of the deep Universe. After staring at the Hubble Deep Field South region for only 27 hours, the new observations reveal the distances, motions and other properties of far more galaxies than ever before in this tiny piece of…