The globular star cluster NGC 6362
This colourful view of the globular cluster NGC 6362 was captured by the Wide Field Imager attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. This brilliant ball of ancient stars lies in the southern constellation of Ara (The Altar).
The bright star cluster NGC 6520 and the strangely shaped dark cloud Barnard 86
This image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, shows the bright star cluster NGC 6520 and its neighbour, the strangely shaped dark cloud Barnard 86. This cosmic pair is set against millions of glowing stars from the brightest...
Hubble image of the globular star cluster NGC 6362
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers an impressive view of the centre of globular cluster NGC 6362. The image of this spherical collection of stars takes a deeper look at the core of the globular cluster, which contains a high concentration of stars with different colours. This image was...
The Lupus 3 dark cloud and associated hot young stars
This evocative image shows a dark cloud where new stars are forming along with a cluster of brilliant stars that have already emerged from their dusty stellar nursery. This cloud is known as Lupus 3 and it lies about 600 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). It...
The Pencil Nebula, a strangely shaped leftover from a vast explosion
The oddly shaped Pencil Nebula (NGC 2736) is pictured in this image from ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. This nebula is a small part of a huge remnant left over after a supernova explosion that took place about 11 000 years ago. The image was produced by the Wide Field Imager on the...
Wide-field view of the sky around the Thor’s Helmet Nebula
This wide-field view shows the rich region of sky around the Thor’s Helmet Nebula (NGC 2359) in the constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog). This view was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Wide-field view of the sky around the spiral galaxy NGC 1187
This wide-field view is centred on the spiral galaxy NGC 1187 in the constellation of Eridanus (The River). It is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The distorted companion galaxy ESO 480-G020 can be seen to the upper-right of NGC 1187, close to a...
Close-up view of the head of the Seagull Nebula
This image from ESO’s La Silla Observatory shows part of a stellar nursery nicknamed the Seagull Nebula. This cloud of gas, known as Sh 2-292, RCW 2 and Gum 1, seems to form the head of the seagull and glows brightly due to the energetic radiation from a very hot young star lurking at its...
A deep look at the strange galaxy Centaurus A
The peculiar galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128) is pictured in this image taken with the Wide Field Imager attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. With a total exposure time of more than 50 hours this is probably the deepest view of this peculiar and...
VLT image of the spiral galaxy NGC 1187
This picture taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the galaxy NGC 1187. This impressive spiral lies about 60 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus (The River). NGC 1187 has hosted two supernova explosions during the last thirty years, the latest one in 2007.
A cosmic quartet
Space can be a lonely place. But not so for this quartet of galaxies making up HCG 86 and observed here with ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST). The four galaxies located approximately 270 million light years from Earth in the Sagittarius constellation, are seen from Earth as arranged in...
Grand designs
This ESO Picture of the Week features a galaxy named both NGC 4254 and Messier 99, a beautiful cosmic spectacle located in the constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair). Messier 99 is special, owing to its classification as a grand design spiral galaxy: a kind of galactic architecture...
Purple Haze
This week’s picture of the week features DG121, an HII region — a cloud of ionised hydrogen — located in the constellation of Puppis (the Stern). HII regions, a type of emission nebulae, are created when young, massive stars release enough ultraviolet energy to ionise the surrounding gas...
A failed galaxy
If you look closely at the faint and fuzzy centre of this picture, you will find a ghostly galaxy — the not-so-spooky-sounding UDG4 — captured using ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST). UDG stands for ultra-diffuse galaxy: objects as large as the Milky Way but with 100 – 1000 times fewer stars....
A starry superbubble
This gently glowing area of sky is actually a hot bubble of hydrogen gas — named Sh 2-305 — that has been bombarded by intense radiation from nearby stars. Such gas clouds are known as emission nebulae, or HII regions (pronounced “H-two”). The radiation in question is in the ultraviolet part of...
Eyes in the sky
Do you ever get the feeling that you're being watched? This friendly-looking object is the result of two galaxies merging into one another, complete with a pair of eyes hiding two growing supermassive black holes and a swirling grin. Such mergers are rare in our galactic neighbourhood; Mrk 739...
Flying on planet-forming wings
Appearing as a bird in flight, with wings outstretched in the expanse of space, SU Aur, a star much younger and more massive than the Sun, is surrounded by a giant planet-forming disc. This image, captured by the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the disc around SU...
Zooming in on Star Formation
Discovered in the year 1836 by John Herschel, NGC 6902 is a beautiful spiral galaxy located more than 130 million light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius, the Archer. This image was taken with MUSE, the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument attached to one of the four...
Rose of star formation around distant supermassive black hole
Captured with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), this image of the distant spiral galaxy NGC 1097 shows a textbook example of a star-bursting nuclear ring. Located 45 million light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Fornax, this ring lies at the very centre of...
A Messy Nursery of Stars
The thousands of newly formed stars at the heart of NGC 5236 were imaged with the MUSE instrument, attached to ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile. Referred to mostly as the Southern Pinwheel galaxy, NGC 5236 receives its common name from its beautiful spiral arm...
Unassuming beauty
This beautiful image, captured with the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph (FORS) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows a field of stars of all ages — some looming close in the foreground, and others lurking in the far distance. The distinct red and blue hues are thanks to the...
Flowers of stellar wind could be due to stellar companions
The ongoing large-scale ATOMIUM project is being conducted in collaboration with ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, which is located in Chile and has ESO as a partner.The project set out to map the stellar winds blowing out from around a dozen red giant stars, an ambitious...
A Phenomenal View of a Phenomenal Spiral
The MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile has observed NGC 1365, a double-barred spiral galaxy located about 56 million light-years away in the Fornax galaxy cluster, allowing us to construct this spectacular colour image. The galaxy is also known as the Great Barred...
A Galactic Ballet
This image shows a pair of interacting galaxies known as Arp 271. Individually, these galaxies are named NGC 5426 and NGC 5427; both are spirals, and both are roughly the same size. Some astronomers believe that these galaxies are in the process of merging to form a single entity. This...
Caught “Pink-Handed”
The Milky Way contains many regions of starbirth — areas where new stars are springing to life within collapsing clumps of gas and dust. One such region, named Gum 26, is shown here as imaged by the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. Gum 26 is located roughly 20,000...
Stormy seas in Carina
This ESO Picture of the Week shows a crescent-shaped cocoon of gas and dust — a nebula known as NGC 3199, which lies 12 000 light-years away from Earth. It appears to plough through the star-studded sky like a ship through stormy seas. This imagery is very appropriate due to NGC 3199’s...
Ripples and Shells
Compared to their more intricate spiral cousins, elliptical galaxies resemble soft, hazy clouds. These galaxies have smooth, undefined boundaries, and bright cores surrounded by a fuzzy, diffuse glow. However, looks can be deceiving. At least 10% of ellipticals extend much further out into the...
Cloudy with a Chance of Dust
This cloud-strewn new image of RCW 36 (or Gum 20) was captured by ESO’s Focal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph (FORS). It shows one of the sites of massive-star formation closest to our Solar System, about 2300 light-years away. Located in the constellation of Vela (The Sails), the RCW...
ALMA explores a Cosmic Jellyfish
Using the detailed eyes of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have mapped the intense tails of a cosmic jellyfish: a number of knotty streams of gas spewing outwards from a spiral galaxy named ESO 137-001. This celestial...
Stars Form in Silence
This spectacular portrait of the Centaurus A galaxy was captured under clear skies by the newest operational ESO observatory, SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars), located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The state of the art observatory is fitted an array of...
Caught in the act
NGC 3351, also known as Messier 95, was first discovered in 1781 by Pierre Méchain, a French astronomer and surveyor who worked alongside Charles Messier. NGC 3351 is a type of galaxy known as a barred spiral galaxy and it is located in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). New observations of...
A game-changer
This is SS 433, a microquasar first discovered forty years ago and located about 18 000 light-years away in the constellation of Aquila (The Eagle). This image, captured for the very first time at submillimeter wavelengths by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), is special...
Red and Long Dead
This red-hued cloud of gas is named Abell 24, and is located in the constellation of Canis Minor (The Lesser Dog). It is something known as a planetary nebula — a burst of gas and dust created when a star dies and throws its outer layers into space. Despite the name, planetary nebulae have...
The Birth of the Hunter
The constellation of Orion (The Hunter) is one of the most recognisable collections of stars in the night sky. We have noted Orion’s prominent stars for tens of thousands of years at least, and likely far longer. Chinese astronomers called it 参宿 or Shēn, literally “three stars”, for its three...
Starbursts and slow burns
This is one of 74 nearby galaxies whose stellar nurseries were recently observed by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, in an astronomical census called Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS). So far, around 100 000 of these stellar nurseries have...
Starshine in Canis Major
It’s impossible to miss the star in this ESO Picture of the Week — beaming proudly from the centre of the frame is the massive multiple star system Tau Canis Majoris, the brightest member of the Tau Canis Majoris Cluster (NGC 2362) in the eponymous constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog)....
Off to a strong start
If you had a brand new state-of-the-art telescope facility, what would you look at first? Researchers at the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory — which comprises four small telescopes, each with a 1-metre primary mirror — chose to view the Lagoon Nebula. This magnificent picture is the result, and...
NGC 6902 Caught by SPECULOOS
This Picture of the Week is a special treat: a first-light image from the newest resident of ESO’s Paranal Observatory, the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory. This planet-hunting machine aims to observe nearby but dim stars to locate exoplanets for other telescopes — such as ESO’s forthcoming...
Worlds with many suns
This week’s Picture of the Week highlights another of the 20 images to come out of ALMA’s first Large Program, the Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). DSHARP explored a number of nearby protoplanetary discs to learn more about the earliest stages of planet formation,...
Safe havens for young planets
This week’s Picture of the Week focuses on one of twenty protoplanetary discs explored and imaged by ALMA’s first Large Program, known as the Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). The disc is called AS 209, and its substructures are particularly pronounced thanks to...
Picturesque poison
In December 2018, the comet 46P/Wirtanen passed within 11.6 million kilometres of the Earth — about 30 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. This close pass gave astronomers the chance to observe the comet in detail, and ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) took full...
A portrait of a beauty
Nuzzled in the chest of the constellation Virgo (the Virgin) lies a beautiful cosmic gem — the galaxy Messier 61. This glittering spiral galaxy is aligned face-on towards Earth, thus presenting us with a breathtaking view of its structure. The gas and dust of the intricate spiral arms are...
R Aquarii as seen in 1997
This image shows a chaotic and fascinating binary star system named R Aquarii, as seen in 1997 by the Nordic Optical Telescope on the island of La Palma, Spain. In the 15 years since this image was taken the system has been observed many more times by other telescopes, including ESO’s Very...
VLT view of binary system R Aquarii from 2012
This image reveals a dramatic binary star system named R Aquarii, located 700 light-years from Earth, as seen in 2012 by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). R Aquarii is a so-called “symbiotic binary”, comprising two stars surrounded by a large, dynamic cloud of gas (a nebula). Systems like this...
Comet-like stars
This spectacular Picture of the Week was produced from data gathered by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, combined with data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It shows a cluster of stars named Westerlund 1, one of the most massive young star clusters...
A rosette for the VLT
This colourful image shows a part of the Rosette Nebula in the constellation of Monoceros (The Unicorn). It is an emission nebula, composed of clouds of gas that are made to glow by the radiation emanating from stars within. The Rosette Nebula is a fairly typical example of an emission nebula —...
Lights out in the galactic centre
A sinister smile appears amid a sea of stars in this image — a small portion of a gigantic gigapixel colour mosaic of the Milky Way’s heart. Comprised of thousands of incredibly detailed images taken by ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), the mosaic reveals more...
Cloudlets swarm around our local supermassive black hole
This image from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows the area surrounding Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole that lurks at the centre of the Milky Way — highlighted here with a small circle. New research has revealed exciting evidence of interstellar gas and...
Through the Hourglass
This object is possibly the oldest of its kind ever catalogued: the hourglass-shaped remnant named CK Vulpeculae. Originally thought to be a nova, classifying this unusually shaped object correctly has proven challenging over the years. A number of possible explanations for its origins have...
An explosive phoenix
This image shows a dwarf galaxy in the southern constellation of Phoenix named, for obvious reasons, the Phoenix Dwarf. The Phoenix Dwarf is unique in that it cannot be classified according to the usual scheme for dwarf galaxies; while its shape would label it as a spheroidal dwarf galaxy —...
ALMA spies a new planetary nursery
This image from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows MWC 758, a young star that is approaching adulthood and surrounded by knotty, irregular rings of cosmic dust, three of which can be seen here. Unusually, these rings are elliptical in shape rather than being perfectly...
Hidden from view
This ESO Picture of the Week shows the centre of a galaxy named NGC 5643. This galaxy is located 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Lupus (The Wolf), and is known as a Seyfert galaxy. Seyfert galaxies have very luminous centres — thought to be powered by material being...
VIMOS’s last embrace
Two spiral galaxies are locked in a spellbinding, swirling dance in this image from the VIMOS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The two interacting galaxies — NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 — together form an intriguing astronomical object named Arp 271, the subject of this, the final...
An echo of light
This unique image from ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) reveals two galaxies at the very beginning of the merging process. The interactions between the duo have created a rare effect known as a light echo, where light reverberates around the material within each galaxy. This is analogous to the...
A diamond in the rough
Squint or you’ll miss it! At the very centre of this image, taken with the VIMOS instrument attached to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), you can just about see the faint and fuzzy blue form of a distant galaxy known as the Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular Galaxy. Discovered in 1977 with the ESO...
Young planet creates a scene
Nestled in the young Ophiuchus star-forming region, 410 light-years from the Sun, a fascinating protoplanetary disc named AS 209 is slowly being carved into shape. This wonderful image was captured using the high-resolution ALMA telescope, revealing a curious pattern of rings and gaps in the...
VLT map of gas within NGC 7252’s minispiral
This unusual image reveals the aftermath of a catastrophic collision between two galaxies, which happened about one billion years ago. The result? A single, very oddly shaped galaxy named NGC 7252, and curiously nicknamed the Atoms for Peace galaxy. At the heart of this merger remnant lies a...
A red giant sheds its skin
This ghostly image features a distant and pulsating red giant star known as R Sculptoris. Situated 1200 light-years away in the constellation of Sculptor, R Sculptoris is something known as a carbon-rich asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star, meaning that it is nearing the end of its life. At...
Ribbons and pearls
This week’s picture shows spectacular ribbons of gas and dust wrapping around the pearly centre of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1398. This galaxy is located in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), approximately 65 million light-years away. Rather than beginning at the very middle of the...
Hubble image of NGC 7252
The stunning Atoms for Peace galaxy was given its nickname due to its superficial resemblance to an atomic nucleus, surrounded by the loops of orbiting electrons. “Atoms for Peace” was the title of a speech given by President Eisenhower in 1953, in an attempt to rebrand nuclear power as a tool...
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