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M82 Hubble and Webb
Starburst galaxy M82 was observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2006, which showed the galaxy’s edge-on spiral disk, shredded clouds, and hot hydrogen gas. The James Webb Space Telescope has observed M82’s core, capturing in unprecedented detail the structure of the galactic wind and...
Webb NIRCam – Shorter Wavelengths
A team of astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to survey the starburst galaxy Messier 82 (M82), which is located 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. M82 hosts a frenzy of star formation, sprouting new stars 10 times faster than the Milky Way galaxy. Webb’s...
Webb NIRCam – Longer Wavelength
Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to look toward M82’s center, where a galactic wind is being launched as a result of rapid star formation and subsequent supernovas. Studying the galactic wind can offer insight in how the loss of gas shapes the future growth of the galaxy. This...
Wayward Asteroid Photobombs Hubble Snapshot of Galaxy UGC 12158
This Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158 looks like someone took a white marking pen to it. In reality it is a combination of time exposures of a foreground asteroid moving through Hubble's field-of-view, photobombing the observation of the galaxy. Several...
Intruder Galaxy Shocks Tightly-Knit Group
A compact group of galaxies about 280 million light years from Earth.
Chandra's Archives Come to Life
Six images that combine Chandra data with those from other telescopes.
Asteroid photobombs Hubble snapshot of Galaxy UGC 12158
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158 looks like someone took a white marking pen to it. In reality it is a combination of time exposures of a foreground asteroid moving through Hubble’s field of view, photobombing the observation of the galaxy....
Never Before Seen: Two Supermassive Black Holes in Same Galaxy
An extremely luminous galaxy about 400 million light years from Earth.
Chandra Takes In The Bright Lights, Big City Of The Milky Way
A 400 by 900 light-year mosaic of images located about 25,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius.
Milky Way Monster Stars in Cosmic Reality Show
This image of Sgr A* was made from the longest X-ray exposure of that region to date.
Wide-field view around the BH3 black hole
This image shows a wide-field view of the area around Gaia BH3, the most massive stellar black hole in our galaxy. The black hole itself is not visible here, but the star that orbits around it can be seen right at the centre of this image, created from photographs of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
NGC 2685: A Helix in the Sky
The very unusual galaxy NGC 2685, also known as the Helix Galaxy, is located about 40 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. This image was captured by the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF NOIRLab which is funded by the...
The sky around the star V960 Mon
This image shows the sky around the location of the star V960 Mon. This picture was created from images in the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
ALMA view of the 9io9 galaxy
This image shows the orientation of the magnetic field in the distant 9io9 galaxy, seen here when the Universe was only 20% of its current age — the furthest ever detection of a galaxy’s magnetic field. The observations were done with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in...
Combined SPHERE and ALMA image of material orbiting V960 Mon
At the centre of this image is the young star V960 Mon, located over 5000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. Dusty material with potential to form planets surrounds the star. Observations obtained using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument...
R Leporis as imaged by ALMA
This image of R Leporis, a star in the final stages of its evolution, is the highest resolution image ever achieved with ALMA. It has an angular resolution of 5 milli-arcseconds, equivalent to seeing a 10-metre-long bus on the Moon. It was achieved using the ALMA Band 10 (high-frequency)...
An infrared view of the 9io9 galaxy
This infrared image shows the distant galaxy 9io9, seen here as a reddish arc curved around a bright nearby galaxy. This nearby galaxy acts as a gravitational lens: its mass curves spacetime around it, bending lightrays coming from 9io9 in the background, hence its distorted shape. This colour...
Intricate spiral arms around V960 Mon captured with SPHERE
This image of the young star V960 Mon and its surrounding material was taken with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s VLT. The material orbiting the young star is assembling together in a series of intricate spiral arms that extend to distances...
Large dusty clumps orbiting V960 Mon captured by ALMA
This image of the young star V960 Mon and surrounding dusty material was obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. Large dusty clumps with masses similar to that of planets are visible here as blue blobs. These clumps could contract and...
A planet and its Trojan orbiting a star in the PDS 70 system
This image, taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, shows the young planetary system PDS 70, located nearly 400 light-years away from Earth. The system features a star at its centre, around which the planet PDS 70b is orbiting. On the same...
Widefield image of the sky around PDS 70
This colourful image shows the sky around the faint orange dwarf star PDS 70 (in the middle of the image). The bright blue star to the right is χ Centauri.
Wide-field view of the region of the sky around the nebula NGC 6164/6165
This wide-field view, created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2, shows the rich star clouds in the constellation of Norma (the Carpenter’s Square) in our Milky Way galaxy. The beautiful nebula NGC 6164/6165, also known as the Dragon’s Egg, appears in the centre of the image.
The nebula (NGC 6164/6165) surrounding HD 148937 as seen in visible light
This image, taken with the VLT Survey Telescope hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, shows the beautiful nebula NGC 6164/6165, also known as the Dragon’s Egg. The nebula is a cloud of gas and dust surrounding a pair of stars called HD 148937. In a new study using ESO data, astronomers have...
The eponymous NGC 3783
This image features NGC 3783, a bright barred spiral galaxy about 130 million light-years from Earth, that also lends its name to the eponymous NGC 3783 galaxy group. Like galaxy clusters, galaxy groups are aggregates of gravitationally bound galaxies. Galaxy groups, however, are less massive...
Hidden in a dark cloud
The subject of this week’s Picture of the Week from Hubble is the spiral galaxy IC 4633, located 100 million light-years away from us in the constellation Apus. IC 4633 is a galaxy rich in star-forming activity, as well as hosting an active galactic nucleus at its core. From our point of view,...
Take a tour of the stunning Gum 41 nebula
Located in the picturesque southern constellation of Centaurus, the Gum 41 nebula takes up most of this image brought to you by the VLT Survey Telescope, hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Let’s take a closer look at this intricate structure. Set against a colorful backdrop of stars,...
Wide-field View of NGC 1532
The spiral galaxy NGC 1532, also known as Haley’s Coronet, is caught in a lopsided tug of war with its smaller neighbor, the dwarf galaxy NGC 1531. The image — taken by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Dark Energy Camera mounted on the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Víctor M. Blanco...
Background Galaxy Found in Image of Vela Supernova Remnant
This image shows a distant, twinkling spiral galaxy — one of the many cosmic treasures found within the new 1.3 gigapixel Vela Supernova Remnant image, captured with the Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the US National Science Foundation's Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter...
Two’s company
This image features Arp 72, a very selective galaxy group that only includes two interacting galaxies: NGC 5996 (the large spiral galaxy) and NGC 5994 (its smaller companion, in the lower left of the image). Both galaxies lie approximately 160 million light-years from Earth, and their cores are...
The magnificent starburst galaxy Messier 82
This mosaic image of the magnificent starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82) is the sharpest wide-angle view ever obtained of M82. It is a galaxy remarkable for its webs of shredded clouds and flame-like plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out from its central regions where young stars are being...
Wide View of Spiral Galaxy Messier 106
This image of the spiral galaxy Messier 106, or NGC 4258, was taken with the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. A popular target for amateur astronomers, Messier 106 can also be spotted with a small telescope in the constellation...
The Twisted Dusty Disk of NGC 4753
Discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1784, NGC 4753 displays some truly fascinating features. In this image captured by the Gemini South telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, the galaxy’s intricate dust lanes are a sight to behold. NGC...
Glowing Hydrogen Bauble in the Small Magellanic Cloud
Orbiting around the Milky Way about 210,000 light-years away is the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). This satellite galaxy is a dwarf galaxy, about a twentieth the size of our own galaxy. Sitting among its hundred million stars is a 'bauble' of hydrogen gas, captured here with the 4.1-meter...
This distant cluster of galaxies was discovered by the XXL survey. It was found by its telltale X-ray emission coming from hot gas, which was detected by ESA's XMM-Newton satellite. The distances to individual galaxies were found using ESO and other telescopes, to allow a three-dimensional view...
This image superimposes an X-ray image of a distant cluster (the blue pixellated image, from ESA's XMM-Newton satellite) on top of a ground-based view of the sky (from the Canada France Hawaii Telescope). Some of the brightest X-ray objects are galaxies with brilliant centres powered by...
The Very Large Telescope snaps a stellar nursery and celebrates fifteen years of operations
This intriguing new view of a spectacular stellar nursery IC 2944 is being released to celebrate a milestone: 15 years of ESO’s Very Large Telescope. This image also shows a group of thick clouds of dust known as the Thackeray globules silhouetted against the pale pink glowing gas of the...
The Gum 15 star formation region
This richly detailed new view from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the star formation region Gum 15. This little-known object is located in the constellation of Vela (The Sails), some 3000 light-years from Earth. The glowing cloud is a stunning example...
Supernova 1994D in the galaxy NGC 4526
This image obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy NGC 4526 and its supernova 1994D (lower left).
The star formation region Gum 41
This new image from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile reveals a cloud of hydrogen and newborn stars called Gum 41. In the middle of this little-known nebula, brilliant hot young stars emit energetic radiation that causes the...
This image superimposes an X-ray image of a distant cluster (the blue image, from ESA's XMM-Newton satellite) on top of a ground-based view of the sky (from the Canada France Hawaii Telescope). Some of the brightest X-ray objects are galaxies with brilliant centres powered by supermassive black...
Wide-field view of the centre of the Milky Way
This visible light wide-field view shows the rich star clouds in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer) in the direction of the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The entire image is filled with vast numbers of stars — but far more remain hidden behind clouds of dust and are only revealed...
A view of the Milky Way supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* in polarised light
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of our Milky Way black hole released in 2022, has captured a new view of the massive object at the centre of our Galaxy: how it looks in polarised light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to...
First image of our black hole
This is the first image of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It’s the first direct visual evidence of the presence of this black hole. It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), an array which linked together eight existing radio observatories across...
A view of the M87 supermassive black hole in polarised light
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of a black hole released in 2019, has today a new view of the massive object at the centre of the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy: how it looks in polarised light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to...
Raw image from the FLAMES instrument on the VLT
A raw image from the FLAMES instrument on the VLT: each of the 130 MEDUSA fibre is positioned on a different star in a cluster. The light from each fibre is dispersed by the GIRAFFE spectrograph, forming a spectrum that shows the intensity of the light for each constituent colour. On the image,...
Raw image from the FLAMES instrument on the VLT
A raw image from the FLAMES instrument on the VLT: each of the “pixels” of the ARGUS Integral Field Spectroscopy system is fitted with an optical fibre that brings the light into the GIRAFFE spectrograph, which in turns disperses its individual colours to form a spectrum. On this image, each...
The galactic centre
The view of the centre of our galaxy with a closer view of the object known as Sagittarius A*, the bright radio source that corresponds to the supermassive black hole.
HAWK-I view of the Milky Way’s central region (close-up)
This image features a close-up of a wide-field, near-infrared view of the central region of the Milky Way, taken with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope.
View of the galactic centre
View of the Galactic centre captured with ESO's VISTA infrared survey telescope, as part of the Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) ESO public survey.
HAWK-I view of the Milky Way’s central region
Taken with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert, this stunning image shows the Milky Way’s central region with an angular resolution of 0.2 arcseconds. This means the level of detail picked up by HAWK-I is roughly equivalent to seeing a football...
Wide-field view of the centre of the Milky Way
This visible light wide-field view shows the rich star clouds in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer) in the direction of the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The entire image is filled with vast numbers of stars — but far more remain hidden behind clouds of dust and are only revealed...
No zoom
This image shows a globular cluster known as NGC 1651. Like the object in another recent Picture of the Week, it is located about 162 000 light-years away in the largest and brightest of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). A notable feature of this image is...
FS Tau
FS Tau is a multi-star system made up of FS Tau A, the bright star-like object near the middle of the image, and FS Tau B (Haro 6-5B), the bright object to the far right that is partially obscured by a dark, vertical lane of dust. The young objects are surrounded by softly illuminated gas and...
Ribbons and pearls
This is an image of the galaxy NGC 1398. The original version and description are available in the ESO image archive.
The light of a star was dispersed according to its colours, or wavelengths, in a very long strip. The optical elements in the spectrograph chop this long spectrum in a series of shorter ones which are positioned one after the other on the two detectors of the instrument. In order to measure the...
A raw image from one of the four detectors of HAWK-I
A raw image from one of the four detectors of HAWK-I. The images taken with astronomical instruments are always in intensity scale: the information on the colours is obtained by taking exposures through different glass filters, in this case the near-infrared H filter. This image was used,...
Halley's comet
This stunning image was captured by ESO's very own Wide Field Camera. Halley is the only short-period comet that is clearly visible to the naked eye from Earth, and thus the only naked-eye comet that might appear twice in a human lifetime.
A Halley's comet photographic plate
A photographic plate of Halley's Comet from 1986. An enhanced image from a GPO photographic plate.
Halley's comet
Stunning image of Halley's Comet, obtained in 1986 with the GPO.
Comet Halley from La Silla in 1986
A beautiful image of Comet Halley and its tail during its last passage through the inner Solar System. This colour image was assembled by combining three individual exposures obtained on three separate photographic plates with the Grand Prisme Objectif telescope at La Silla in 1986.
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