Betelgeuse’s dust plumes seen by VISIR image
This image, obtained with the VISIR instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shows the infrared light being emitted by the dust surrounding Betelgeuse in December 2019. The clouds of dust, which resemble flames in this dramatic image, are formed when the star sheds its material back into...
Visible/infrared comparison views of the newly discovered globular cluster VVV CL001
This picture shows a comparison of the view of the newly discovered globular cluster VVV CL001 in visible (upper) and infrared light (lower). The infrared view, from the VISTA telescope, shows the new cluster very clearly for the first time and allows many of the component stars to be...
The Omega Nebula
Three-colour composite image of the Omega Nebula (Messier 17, or NGC 6618), based on images obtained with the EMMI instrument on the ESO 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory. North is down and East is to the right in the image. It spans an angle equal to about one...
A high amount of ram
This image features IC 3476, a dwarf galaxy that lies about 54 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. Whilst this image does not look very dramatic — if we were to anthropomorphise the galaxy, we might say it looks almost serene — the actual physical events taking...
Hubble traces 'string-of-pearls' star clusters in galaxy collisions
Contrary to what you might think, galaxy collisions do not destroy stars. In fact, the rough-and-tumble dynamics trigger new generations of stars, and presumably accompanying planets. Now the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has homed in on twelve interacting galaxies that have long,...
Cosmic Payback: Giant Galaxy Reacts to Being Dumped On
A large galaxy in the center of a cluster of galaxies located in the constellation Bootes.
Star Factory Near Galactic Center Bathed In High-Energy X-Rays
This composite image shows an envelope of 60-million-degree gas around a young cluster of stars, known as the Arches cluster.
"Black" Black Holes
Illustration of a Black Hole Event Horizon These illustrations depict gas from a Sun-like companion star being drawn in a swirling pattern into a black hole (top) and onto a neutron star (bottom). In both examples, as the gas nears the central object, a strong gravitational redshift makes it...
Chandra Finds Ghosts Of Eruption In Galaxy Cluster
A cluster of galaxies about a billion light years from Earth, located in the constellation Aquarius.
Most Distant X-Ray Jet Yet Discovered Provides Clues To Big Bang
The quasar GB1508+5714 reveals a jet of high-energy particles.
What Lies Beneath
A series of Chandra observations of the spiral galaxy NGC 1637.
Iron Spectra from Supermassive Black Holes
X-rays from iron atoms near distant supermassive black holes in the North and South Chandra Deep Fields.
The forest for the trees, the galaxy for the stars
This image shows a densely packed field of stars, laid on top of a background of dust, gas, and light from more distant celestial objects. The stars take up so much of the field of view in this image that it is a little tricky to discern that you are in fact looking at most of a galaxy, known...
If the Hubble Picture of the Week from two weeks ago was somewhat dim and subtle in appearance, then this week’s image is a veritable riot of colour and activity! It features a relatively close-by star-forming region known as IRAS 16562-3959 that lies within the Milky Way in the constellation...
Dark Energy Camera's 1 millionth exposure
The Dark Energy Camera's 1 millionth exposure. At the time of this exposure DECam was making an of a galaxy cluster. The 1 millionth exposure has been combined with 127 earlier exposures to make this view of the field. This demonstrates the power of DECam and an archive of a million exposures....
A Supernova in Progress
A supernova in the galaxy M101, 22 million light years from Earth.
Cosmic Fireworks
Four supernovas 160,000 light years from Earth Chandra's images show expanding shells of gas heated to millions of degrees by shock waves from supernova explosions. Moving in a clockwise direction from the upper left to the lower left, the approximate ages of the remnants are 600 years, 1,500...
Astronomers Do Flips Over Cartwheel Galaxy
A ring galaxy 400 million light years from Earth. This image combines data from four different wavelengths of light: infrared (red), visible (green), ultraviolet (blue), and X-ray(purple). The unusual shape of the Cartwheel Galaxy is likely due to a collision with one of the smaller galaxies on...
Detection of Hot Halo Gets Theory Out of Hot Water
A massive spiral galaxy about 100 million light years from Earth.
Chandra Reveals Cloud Disrupted By Supernova Shock
A supernova remnant about 7,000 light years from Earth
Abell 1689: A Galaxy Cluster Makes Its Mark
A galaxy cluster at a distance of about 2.3 billion light years from Earth.
A Mysterious Elliptical Galaxy
An elliptical galaxy at a distance of about 300 million light years.
A Young Pulsar Shows its Hand
A 1700-year-old pulsar and its nebula, located about 17,000 light years from Earth.
A Galactic Spectacle
A pair of colliding galaxies about 62 million light years from Earth.
Close Encounters of the Galactic Kind
Two pairs of galaxies in a large survey that covers a large patch -- two square degrees -- on the sky
Telescopes Combine to Push Frontier on Galaxy Clusters
Two galaxy clusters located about 4.3 billion and 5.4 billion light years away respectively.
Telescopes Combine to Push Frontier on Galaxy Clusters
Two galaxy clusters located about 4.3 billion and 5.4 billion light years away respectively.
Chandra Sees Evidence for Possible Planet in Another Galaxy
Astronomers have found evidence for a possible planet candidate in the M51 ("Whirlpool") galaxy, representing what could be the first planet detected outside of the Milky Way.
Data from Chandra show the effects of powerful winds launched from the center of a nearby galaxy.
Dim, but still distinct
This image of the spiral galaxy UGC 11105 is not as bright and vivid as some other Hubble Pictures of the Week. This softly luminous galaxy — lying in the constellation Hercules, about 110 million light-years from Earth — seems outshone by the sparkling foreground stars that surround it. The...
Gaia's all-sky view
Gaia's all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighbouring galaxies, based on measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars. The map shows the total brightness and colour of stars observed by the ESA satellite in each portion of the sky between July 2014 and May 2016. Brighter regions indicate...
The Tarantula Nebula region imaged with HAWK-I without adaptive optics
This image of the dramatic star formation region 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, was created from a mosaic of images taken using the HAWK-I instrument working without adaptive optics.
The Tarantula Nebula region imaged with HAWK-I with the Adaptive Optics Facility
This image of the dramatic star formation region 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, was created from a mosaic of images taken using the HAWK-I instrument working with the Adaptive optics Facility of ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. The stars are significantly sharper than the...
Winds blowing on a dying star
Stars like our Sun constantly eject large amounts of gas and dust into space, but over their lifetimes the levels of this activity change. Scientists continually scour the skies in search of explanations for how and why these changes occur. One such stage of development is the asymptotic giant...
NGC 6563
The planetary nebula NGC 6563 resides in a crowded starry region of the sky. In natural sky conditions many of these stars remain invisible due to the blurring effect of the Earth’s atmosphere. When the AOF supplies its superb correction a myriad fainter stars become visible, together with a...
NGC 6369
The image is how NGC 6369 is seen in natural sky conditions. This image is part of an image comparison.
NGC 6563
The planetary nebula NGC 6563 resides in a crowded starry region of the sky. In natural sky conditions many of these stars remain invisible due to the blurring effect of the Earth’s atmosphere. This image is part of an image comparison.
NGC 6369
The image depicts the true power of the Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF), revealing much finer details in the faint planetary nebula structure. This image is part of an image comparison.
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.
Orion Molecular Cloud in visible light (for comparison)
Visible light view of the region of the Orion Molecular Cloud from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS)
The Orion A molecular cloud (for comparison)
This image from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile is part of the largest infrared high-resolution mosaic of Orion ever created. It covers the Orion A molecular cloud, the nearest known massive star factory, lying about 1350 light-years from...
Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths
The top panel shows compact sources of submillimetre radiation detected by APEX as part of the ATLASGAL survey, combined with complementary data from ESA’s Planck satellite, to capture more extended features. This image is part of a comparison image.
Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths
This image shows the same part of sky again at even shorter wavelengths, the near-infrared, as seen by ESO’s VISTA infrared survey telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Regions appearing as dark dust tendrils here show up brightly in the ATLASGAL view. This image is part of a...
Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths
This image shows the same region as seen in shorter, infrared, wavelengths by the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope.This image is part of a comparison image. This image is part of a comparison image.
Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths
This picture shows the more familiar view in visible light, where most of the more distant structures are hidden from view. This is part of an image comparison.
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.
Laser frequency comb installed on HARPS
In April 2015 the HARPS laser frequency comb was installed on the HARPS planet-finding instrument on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile after completion of an intense first commissioning phase. The increase in accuracy made possible by this new installation should...
The bright orange central region of the ring (ALMA's highest-resolution observation ever) reveals the glowing dust in this distant galaxy. The surrounding lower-resolution portions of the ring trace the millimetre-wavelength light emitted by carbon dioxide and water molecules.
Raw image of the Omega Nebula
This raw image, straight from EMMI, was used, together with many others, to produce the iconic colour photo of the Omega Nebula. The images taken with astronomical instruments are always monochromatic: the information on the colours is obtained by taking exposures...
Trifid Nebula in visible light
This picture shows a familiar visible-light view of the Trifid Nebula from a small telescope on the ground.
VISTA views the Trifid and reveals hidden variable stars
This small extract from the VISTA VVV survey of the central parts of the Milky Way shows the famous Trifid Nebula to the right of centre. It appears as faint and ghostly at these infrared wavelengths when compared to the familiar view at visible wavelengths. This transparency has brought its...
A raw spectrum obtained with EFOSC2
A long, narrow slit isolates a small strip of sky. On this image, the slit is horizontal. The spectrograph then splits the light from the slit into its individual colours, with each point along the slit forming a vertical rainbow. In this spectrum, the light from NGC 5775, a galaxy, forms faint...
NGC 5427 with EFOSC2
This raw image, straight from the instrument, was used with many others, to produce the photo of NGC 5427 displayed on this page. The images taken with astronomical instruments are always in black and white, represented here as a scale of colours. The information encoded in the colours of the...
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...
ALMA short wavelength image of Uranus
As a demonstration of ALMA's new short wavelength capabilities, the commissioning team released a new image of planet Uranus as it appears in submillimetre wavelength light. The image — obtained with ALMA's shortest wavelength, Band 10 receivers — reveals the icy glow from the planet's...
ALMA observations of Pluto and Charon
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are making high-precision measurements of Pluto's location and orbit around the Sun to help NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft accurately home in on its target when it nears Pluto and its five known moons in July 2015. This...
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,...
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...
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,...
IC 2944 with FORS2
This raw image, straight from the instrument, was used, together with many others, to produce the main photo at the top of this page. The images taken with astronomical instruments are always monochromatic: the information on the colours is obtained by taking exposures through different glass...
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