NGC 2359 (aka Thor’s Helmet) is an emission nebula in the constellation Canis Major. The nebula is about 15,000 light-years away and 30 light-years across. The central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. This image was taken by the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
Image Credit: ESO
NGC 1807 is a spiral galaxy about 80 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cetus. The apparent menacing red glow in this false color image actually corresponds to clouds of cold molecular gas, the raw material from which stars are made. The clouds were imaged in radio wavelengths by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The bluish regions in the background reveal older, already formed stars, imaged by the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).
Image Credit: ESO
Back in 2005, the New Horizons spacecraft was launched. Ten years later, it flew by Pluto, and our view of the planet sharpened from an almost-featureless blob to a world with mountains and plains. In a few days, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch a spacecraft to the metal-rich asteroid Psyche. In 2029, the Psyche orbiter will arrive at the asteroid, and our view will improve over the image above which was taken by the ESO’s Very Large Telescope.
Image Credit: ESO
Video Credit: ESO
Video Credit: NASA
Video Credit: ESO
The Orion Nebula is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. It’s the closest region of massive star formation to Earth.
This is a composite of over 80 images taken by ESO’s Very Large Telescope.
Image Credit: ESO / M.McCaughrean et al. (AIP)
This image of the Horsehead Nebula was assembled for from data taken by ESO’s Very Large Telescope. It’s a small dark nebula in the constellation Orion located just to the south of Alnitak, the easternmost star of Orion’s Belt, and it’s part of the much larger Orion molecular cloud complex.
Image Credit: ESO
The OmegaCAM imager on ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope captured this view of the cosmic dust and gas clouds reflecting, absorbing, and re-emiting the light of hot young stars within the star nursery called Sharpless 29.
Image Credit: ESO
This animation shows the evolution of the cloud of debris that was ejected the asteroid Dimorphos after it was hit by the DART spacecraft. It was created using images taken with the MUSE instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope during the one month after the impact.
Video Credit: ESO
The Very Large Telescope at ESO in Chile, has a new infrared sensor called ERIS. This ERIS image reveals the inner region of the galaxy NGC 1097, showing the gaseous and dusty ring that lies at the very center of the galaxy. The bright spots in the ring are stellar nurseries. The image was taken using four different filters by ERIS’s infrared imager, the Near Infrared Camera System (NIX). ERIS will be an upgrade from the pevious NACO imager.
Video Credit: ESO
Last week, I posted a view of a recently observed Gamma Ray Burst as seen by the X-ray Telescope abort the Swift satellite. This is what it looked like as seen by the Very Large Telescope at the European Souther Observatory in Chile. The GRB is the red spot near the middle of the image.
After the initial bright flash of a GRB has faded, the afterglow shines at longer wavelengths of visible and infrared light. The team at ESO was able to gather data to show burst originated from an extremely distant galaxy when the universe was only 6% of its current age. This was one of the oldest GRB yet detected.
Image Credit: ESO
Video Credits: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Webb ERO Production Team
ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile captured this image of the Medusa Nebula (also known Abell 21 and Sharpless 2-274). As the star at the heart of this nebula made its final transition into the final stage of its existence, it blew off its outer layers into space, forming this colorful cloud. The Sun will go through a similar process in a few billion years.
Image Credit: ESO
Video Credit: ESO
Video Credit: ESO
This video fades between views of Messier 83 in visible light and infrared images captured at European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The dust that obscures many stars becomes nearly transparent in the infrared image. That image may seem less dramatic, but it shows a swarm of new stars that are otherwise invisible.
Video Credit: ESO / M. Gieles
Acknowledgement: Mischa Schirmer
These images have been captured with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile as part of a program that surveyed some of the largest asteroids in our Solar System.
Video Credit: ESO
The VLT Survey Telescope in Chile has taken this beautifully detailed image of the galaxy Messier 33 (aka the Triangulum Galaxy). This nearby spiral is the second closest large galaxy to our own galaxy.
Image Credit: ESO
Video Credit: ESO
The ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope in Chile has taken this beautifully detailed image of the galaxy Messier 33 (aka the Triangulum Galaxy). This nearby spiral is the second closest large galaxy to our own galaxy.
Image Credit: ESO
ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile captured this image of the Medusa Nebula (also known Abell 21 and Sharpless 2-274). As the star at the heart of this nebula made its final transition into the final stage of its existence, it blew off its outer layers into space, forming this colorful cloud. The Sun will go through a similar process in a few billion years.
Image Credit: ESO
This animation shows a #D rendering of a gas halo observed by ESO’s Very Large Telescope superimposed over an older image of a galaxy merger obtained with ESO’s Atacama Large Millimeter Array. The halo of hydrogen gas is shown in blue, and the ALMA data is shown in orange. The halo is bound to the galaxy, which contains a quasar at its center. The gas in the halo provides the perfect food source for the supermassive black hole at the centre of the quasar.
The redshift on these objects is 6.2, meaning we see them as they were 12.8 billion years ago.
Video Credit: ESO
Video Credit: ESO
The ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope in Chile has taken this beautifully detailed image of the galaxy Messier 33 (aka the Triangulum Galaxy). This nearby spiral is the second closest large galaxy to our own galaxy.
Image Credit: ESO