Credit: ESO

"First Light" test observation with the GIRAFFE spectrograph of about 50 high-quality spectra (10 min exposure at spectral resolution 7,000) of stars in the Milky Way disk, in the early morning of July 3, 2002. The stars have magnitudes of 12 - 16 and are all of solar type. The photo shows part of the image recorded with a 2000 x 4000 pixel CCD detector at the focal plane of the spectrograph. Each stellar spectrum is seen as one vertical line - some of the absorption lines can be seen as dark horizontal features.

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0219a/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License