A raw spectrum obtained with FORS
A long, narrow slit isolates a small strip of sky. On this image, the slit is vertical. The spectrograph then splits the light from the slit into its individual colours, each point of the slit forming a horizontal rainbow. In this spectrum, the light from a distant galaxy appears as a faint...
The VLT images the very faint near-Earth object 2009 FD
The faint spot at the centre of this picture from ESO's Very Large Telescope is the Near-Earth Object 2009 FD. It may look insignificant, but there was a possibility that this asteroid would collide with the Earth in the future and cause devastation. Fortunately the latest VLT observations,...
Alpha Centauri and the Southern Cross
Alpha Centauri and the Southern Cross from Paranal.
Tarantula Nebula
Observing conditions at Paranal are renowned for being excellent, allowing for nice images of deep-sky objects to be produced. Here it is the Tarantula Nebula taken with an amateur telescope.
SMC and 47 Tuc
The Small Magellanic Cloud and globular cluster 47 Tucanae.
Halley's comet
Stunning image of Halley's Comet, obtained in 1986 with the GPO.
Bok Globule
Bok globules are dark clouds of dense cosmic dust and gas in which star formation sometimes takes place.
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.
Centaurus A
This is part of the image comparison The radio galaxy Centaurus A, as seen by ALMA.
The laser frequency comb in action
This picture illustrates part of a spectrum of a star obtained using the HARPS instrument on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The lines are the light from the star spread out in great detail into its component colours. The dark gaps in the lines are absorption...
Orion's Belt
This image is part of the image comparison "Sifting through Dust near Orion’s Belt (mouseover comparison)"
A Halley's comet photographic plate
A photographic plate of Halley's Comet from 1986. An enhanced image from a GPO photographic plate.
Taurus molecular cloud
This image is part of the image comparison of the Taurus Molecular Cloud.
Taurus molecular cloud
This image is part of the image comparison of the Taurus Molecular Cloud.
The Carina Nebula
Colour-composite image of the Carina Nebula, revealing exquisite details in the stars and dust of the region. Several well known astronomical objects can be seen in this wide field image : to the bottom left of the image is one of the most impressive binary stars in the Universe, Eta Carinae,...
VLT image of the Carina Nebula in infrared light
Colour-composite image of the Carina Nebula, revealing exquisite details in the stars and dust of the region. Several well known astronomical objects can be seen in this wide field image : to the bottom left of the image is one of the most impressive binary stars in the Universe, Eta Carinae,...
Helix Nebula
This image is part of the "Infrared/visible light comparison view of the Helix Nebula".
Helix Nebula (infrared)
This image is part of the "Infrared/visible light comparison view of the Helix Nebula".
The Phoenix dwarf galaxy
The Phoenix Dwarf, imaged here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is an irregular dwarf galaxy that was discovered in 1976 by Hans-Emil Schuster and Richard Martin West. It is located in the constellation Phoenix in the southern sky, 1.44 million light-years away from Earth.
Antenna Galaxies
This image is part of the "Antennae Galaxies comparison of ALMA and Hubble observations"
Interferometric fringes from an observation of 3C 273 with the VLTI
An interferometric observation of the quasar 3C 273 with the VLTI. The columns marked UT1, UT2, and UT4 show the data from the individual 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes, which were then combined interferometrically. The resultant fringes are shown in the column marked VLTI. The bright feature is the...
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).
Artwork showing some hexagonal mirror pieces of ELT
Read more about the ELT on http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/e-elt.html
Artwork showing some hexagonal mirror pieces of ELT
Read more about the ELT on http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/e-elt.html
The first "3D" data from the VLTI
This image was created from the first combined image and motion measurements from the AMBER instrument on the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. It shows the mysterious disc of material around the brilliant supergiant star HD 62623. The picture has...
The asteroid P/2010 A2, imaged by OSIRIS on Rosetta
A view of the asteroid P/2010 A2, imaged by the OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera on the ESA spacecraft Rosetta. The asteroid underwent a high-speed collision with a small rock, producing a trail of dust. On the left is the full field of view of the camera, covering 2.2 degrees on a side, which shows...
A fireball in the atmosphere of Jupiter
This image of a fireball, created by the collision of an unknown object with the atmosphere of Jupiter, was obtained by Anthony Wesley on 3 June 2010 at 20:31 from Broken Hill (Australia) using a webcam on his 37 cm aperture home-made telescope. The impact created a short-lived white spot...
High-energy jet in NGC 3862
This is the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the central region of the galaxy NGC 3862 that reveals a jet-like feature previously unseen in optical wavelengths. The image was taken with the European Space Agency's Faint object Camera in F/96 mode at a wavelength of 3400 Å in the...
Digitized Sky Survey image of the star T Leporis
This image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is approximatelly 2.7 x 2.1 degrees. ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Digitized Sky Survey image of ARP 261
This image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is approximatelly 2.7 x 2.8 degrees.
IRAS 13481-6124 and its cradle
The object IRAS 13481-6124 (the bright "star" upper left), which consists of a young central star, about twenty times the mass of our Sun and five times its radius, surrounded by its pre-natal cocoon, is the first massive baby star for which astronomers could obtain an image of a dusty disc...
Digitized Sky Survey image of NGC 253
This image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is approximatelly 3.7 x 3.6 degrees.
The disc around IRAS 13481-6124
Astronomers have been able to obtain the first image of a dusty disc closely encircling a massive baby star, providing direct evidence that massive stars do form in the same way as their smaller brethren —and closing an enduring debate. In order to discover and understand the properties of this...
Mysterious GEMINGA on the move
These photos illustrate the motion of the strange object GEMINGA, now believed to be the nearest known neutron star. The fact that GEMINGA is moving was discovered in early November 1992 on the basis of these photos by Italian astronomers Giovanni F. Bignami, Patrizia A. Caraveo and Sandro...
Around IRAS 13481-6124
The object IRAS 13481-6124, which consists of a young central star, about 20 times the mass of our Sun and 5 times its radius, surrounded by its pre-natal cocoon, is the first massive baby star for which astronomers could obtain an image of a dusty disc closely encircling it, providing direct...
Dust jets in comet Hyakutake
Strong dust jets are visible in this image. They trace the ejection of dust particles from the surface of the cometary nucleus. Of particular interest is the fact that there are substantial morphological changes on arcsec scale within the short time interval between these exposures. This is...
The inner coma of comet Hyakutake
The most recent ESO observations of bright Comet Hyakutake have shown rapid changes in the innermost coma, within a few hundred kilometres from the cometary nucleus. This result has only become possible because of the unusual combination of a bright comet being near the Earth, together with the...
The asymetric shape of the coma of comet Hyakutake
This image shows a combined image, based on 24 R-frames with a total exposure of 48 seconds. It shows the asymmetric shape of the coma contours (isophotes), indicating the presence of much structural detail in the coma. North is up and East is to the left. The distance between the two...
Planet Beta Pictoris seen with the NACO APP (annotated)
The planet Beta Pic b imaged at a wavelength of 4.05 micrometres with the VLT’s NACO instrument using the Apodising Phase Plate (APP) coronagraph on 3 April 2010. The “bad” (bright) side of the image is visible to the right while the central bright regions of the central star (Beta Pictoris)...
Planet Beta Pictoris seen with the NACO APP
The planet Beta Pic b imaged at a wavelength of 4.05 micrometres with the VLT’s NACO instrument using the Apodising Phase Plate (APP) coronagraph on 3 April 2010. The “bad” (bright) side of the image is visible to the right while the central bright regions of the central star (Beta Pictoris)...
A star seen with the NACO APP
Image of a single star as seen with the VLT NACO instrument utilising the Apodising Phase Plate (APP) coronagraph at a wavelength of 4.05 micrometres. On the right-hand side the diffraction rings of the telescope are clearly visible, making the detection of faint sources close to the central...
Comet McNaught seen from the ALMA site
The incomparable view offered by Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught), which reached its perihelion in January 2007, unexpectedly becoming the brightest comet in the previous 40 years. This close-up was taken from the ALMA Operation Support Facility (OSF), located at 2900 m altitude on the road to...
TRAPPIST first light image of Omega Centauri
The globular cluster Omega Centauri was one of the targets observed for first light of the TRAPPIST national telescope at La Silla. The cluster contains as many as ten million stars. This image, 20 arcminutes across, shows only the central parts of Omega Centauri. It is made by combining data...
TRAPPIST first light image of the spiral galaxy Messier 83
One of the TRAPPIST first light images shows the spiral galaxy Messier 83. Messier 83 lies roughly 15 million light-years away in the huge southern constellation of Hydra (the Sea Serpent). It stretches across 40 000 light-years, making it roughly 2.5 times smaller than our own Milky Way....
TRAPPIST–South first light image of the Tarantula Nebula
This first light image of the TRAPPIST–South national telescope at La Silla shows the Tarantula Nebula, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) — one of the galaxies closest to us. Also known as 30 Doradus or NGC 2070, the nebula owes its name to the arrangement of bright patches that...
2M1207b - first image of an exoplanet
This composite image shows an exoplanet (the red spot on the lower left), orbiting the brown dwarf 2M1207 (centre). 2M1207b is the first exoplanet directly imaged and the first discovered orbiting a brown dwarf (see the press release). It was imaged the first time by the VLT in 2004. Its...
The Helix Nebula (NGC7293)
The Helix Nebula (also known as The Helix, NGC 7293, or Caldwell 63) is a large planetary nebula (PN) located in the constellation Aquarius. Discovered by Karl Ludwig Harding, probably before 1824, this object is one of the closest to the Earth of all the bright planetary nebulae. The estimated...
The Cloverleaf quasar
The Cloverleaf Quasar, so named because it is actually a single object appearing as four, courtesy of gravitational lensing. In this phenomenon, foreground galaxies bend and magnify the distant quasar's light into four point sources of illumination.
Herbig-Haro object HH111
Herbig-Haro object HH111, imaged with the 3.5-metre ESO New Technology Telescope (NTT) on La Silla.
A cosmic flame
Sparkling at the edge of a giant cloud of gas and dust, the Flame Nebula, also referred to as NGC 2024, is in fact the hideout of a cluster of young, blue, massive stars, whose light sets the gas ablaze. Located 1,300 light-years away towards the constellation of Orion, the nebula owes its...
A giant galaxy
Centaurus A is our nearest giant galaxy, at a distance of about 13 million light-years in the southern constellation of Centaurus, and as such, it is one of the most extensively studied objects in the southern sky. It is an elliptical galaxy, currently merging with a companion spiral galaxy,...
Eta Carinae and the Keyhole Nebula
Eta Carinae and the Keyhole Nebula, part of the larger Carina Nebula, imaged with the ESO 3.6-metre telescope on La Silla.
Cosmic butterfly
The Bug Nebula, NGC 6302, is one of the brightest and most extreme planetary nebulae known. It is located about 4,000 light-years away, towards the Scorpius constellation (the Scorpion). The nebula is the swansong of a dying solar-like star lying at its centre. At about 250,000 degrees Celsius...
A Milky Way cousin
NGC 2613 is a rarely imaged spiral galaxy located about 60 million light years away towards the southern constellation of Pyxis (the mariner’s compass). It is thought to resemble our own Milky Way. This image is based on data acquired with the 1.5-metre Danish telescope at ESO’s La Silla...
Eta Carinae
The Eta Carinae region, as seen in the ESO/SERC (J) survey plates.
Comet West discovery plate, 1975
Comet West discovery plate, 1975.
The Carina Nebula
The Carina Nebula is a large bright nebula that surrounds several clusters of stars. It contains two of the most massive and luminous stars in our Milky Way galaxy, Eta Carinae and HD 93129A. Located 7500 light years away, the nebula itself spans some 260 light years across, about 7 times the...
Messier 100 and supernova SN 2006X
Similar in appearance to our own Milky Way, Messier 100 is a grand spiral galaxy that presents an intricate structure, with a bright core and two prominent arms. The galaxy harbours numerous young and hot massive stars as well as extremely hot regions of ionised hydrogen. Two smaller arms are...
A curious pair of galaxies
This colour composite image of Arp 261 was created from images obtained using the FORS2 instrument on the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Located 2,600 m above sea level, in the mountains of the Atacama Desert, the Paranal Observatory enjoys some of the...
Measuring motions in three distant galaxies
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images of the three galaxies studied by a team of astronomers who try to understand how galaxies formed when the Universe was half its current age (upper panels). The same galaxies were then studied with the FLAMES/GIRAFFE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope...
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