Teenage galaxies in the distant Universe
This deep view of a tiny patch of sky in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster) shows a selection of galaxies, marked with red crosses, that were used in a new survey of the feeding habits of young galaxies as they grew through cosmic time. Each of the tiny blobs, galaxies seen as they...
ALMA view of the antennae galaxies
The Antennae Galaxies (also known as NGC 4038 and 4039) are a pair of distorted colliding spiral galaxies about 70 million light-years away, in the constellation of Corvus (The Crow). This view shows an image of the galaxies made by ALMA, in two different wavelength ranges, during the...
A spiral galaxy in Leo
This picture of the nearby galaxy NGC 3521 was taken using the FORS1 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The large spiral galaxy lies in the constellation of Leo (The Lion), and is only 35 million light-years distant. This picture was created from...
A galaxy seen when the Universe was only 820 million years old
The red speck at the centre of this very deep image from the ESO Very Large Telescope shows the galaxy NTTDF-474, one of the most distant ever to have had its distance measured accurately. This extremely faint object is one of five that have been used to chart the timeline of the reionisation...
VISTA’s look at the Helix Nebula
ESO's Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) has captured this unusual view of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a planetary nebula located 700 light-years away. The coloured picture was created from images taken through Y, J and K infrared filters. While bringing to light a...
VISTA view of the newly discovered open star cluster VVV CL003 beyond the galactic centre
This image from VISTA is a tiny part of the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) survey that is systematically studying the central parts of the Milky Way in infrared light. At the centre of the picture lies the open star cluster VVV CL003. This newly discovered cluster, which appears as...
A star that should not exist
At the centre of this picture is a very unremarkable looking faint star, too faint to be seen through all but the largest amateur telescopes. This ancient star, in the constellation of Leo (The Lion), is called SDSS J102915+172927 and has been found to have the lowest amount of elements...
Wide field view of the unusual double star SS Leporis
This wide-field image of the sky around the unusual double star SS Leporis is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is approximately 2.7 degrees. SS Leporis is the bright star at the centre. The coloured rings and the four spikes around...
Close-up view of the star HD 85512
This image shows a close-up of the sky around the star HD 85512. The picture was created from photographs taken through red and blue filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The coloured halos around the star, and the spikes of light, are artifacts of the telescope and are...
A galaxy seen when the Universe was only 840 million years old
The red speck at the centre of this very deep image from the ESO Very Large Telescope shows the galaxy NTTDF-6345, one of the most distant ever to have had its distance measured accurately. This extremely faint object is one of five that have been used to chart the timeline of the reionisation...
The composition of a star that should not exist
An ancient star in the constellation of Leo (The Lion), called SDSS J102915+172927, has been found to have the lowest amount of elements heavier than helium of all stars yet studied. The pie-chart shows the star’s composition: it is almost entirely made from hydrogen and helium with only a...
VLT looks into the eyes of the Virgin
This striking image, taken with the FORS2 instrument on the Very Large Telescope, shows a beautiful yet peculiar pair of galaxies, NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, nicknamed The Eyes. The larger of these, at the top of the picture, NGC 4438, is thought to have once been a spiral galaxy that was...
Giant space blob glows from within
This image shows one of the largest known single objects in the Universe, the Lyman-alpha blob LAB-1. This picture is a composite of two different images taken with the FORS instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) — a wider image showing the surrounding galaxies and a much deeper...
The Fried Egg Nebula
This picture of the nebula around a rare yellow hypergiant star called IRAS 17163-3907 is the best ever taken of a star in this class and shows for the first time a huge dusty double shell surrounding the central hypergiant. The star and its shells resemble an egg white around a yolky ...
The spectrum of a star that should not exist
This picture shows the distribution of the light of different colours coming from the remarkable star SDSS J102915+172927 after it has been split up by the X-Shooter instrument on the ESO VLT. Different colours fall in different places in this strange picture and astronomers can use this ...
VISTA finds star clusters galore
Using data from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, an international team of astronomers has discovered 96 new open clusters hidden by the dust in the Milky Way. Thirty of these clusters are shown in this mosaic. These tiny and faint objects were invisible to...
The remarkable star SDSS J102915+172927 in the constellation of Leo (The Lion)
This picture shows the location of the remarkable star SDSS J102915+172927 within the constellation of Leo (The Lion). The photograph on the left shows the whole constellation and the inset shows the precise location of SDSS J102915+172927 on images from the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
The star cluster NGC 2100 in context
This image shows the dramatic surroundings of the star cluster NGC 2100 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The picture is dominated by the Tarantula Nebula, the most active star formation region in the Local Group of galaxies that includes the Milky Way. This picture was created from images...
Superbubble LHA 120-N 44 in the Large Magellanic Cloud
ESO’s Very Large Telescope has been used to obtain this view of the nebula LHA 120-N 44 surrounding the star cluster NGC 1929. Lying within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way, this region of star formation features a colossal superbubble of material expanding...
Antennae galaxies, side-by-side comparison of ALMA and VLT observations
The Antennae Galaxies (also known as NGC 4038 and 4039) are a pair of distorted colliding spiral galaxies about 70 million light-years away, in the constellation of Corvus (The Crow). This view shows a comparison of the millimetre and submillimetre light observations (left), made in two...
Wide-field view of the sky around 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 galaxy NGC 253 appears at the centre of the picture and the globular star cluster NGC 288 at the lower left. The cluster is orbiting the Milky...
The Rho Ophiuchi star formation region, where hydrogen peroxide has been detected in space (annotated)
The colourful Rho Ophiuchi star formation region, about 400 light-years from Earth, contains very cold (around -250 degrees Celsius), dense clouds of cosmic gas and dust, in which new stars are being born. The clouds are mostly made of hydrogen, but contain traces of other chemicals, and...
The most distant quasar
This image of ULAS J1120+0641, a very distant quasar powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun, was created from images taken from surveys made by both the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey. The quasar appears as a faint red dot close to...
The Carina Nebula imaged by the VLT Survey Telescope
The spectacular star-forming Carina Nebula has been captured in great detail by the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. This picture was taken with the help of Sebastián Piñera, President of Chile, during his visit to the observatory on 5 June 2012 and released on the occasion of...
Closing in on a giant space blob
This sequence of images closes in on one of the largest known single objects in the Universe, the Lyman-alpha blob LAB-1. Observations with the ESO VLT show for the first time that this giant "blob" must be powered by galaxies embedded within the cloud. The image on the left shows a wide ...
The COSMOS field
This very deep image shows the COSMOS field imaged by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). Huge numbers of very faint galaxies are visible. A new study of this field, combining data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory has turned up a big...
The flames of Betelgeuse
This picture of the dramatic nebula around the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse was created from images taken with the VISIR infrared camera on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). This structure, resembling flames emanating from the star, forms because the behemoth is shedding its material...
Pandora’s cluster (VLT view)
This image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile shows a wide view of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 2744. This object has been nicknamed Pandora’s Cluster because so many different and strange phenomena have been unleashed by a huge collision that occurred...
Huge storm on Saturn observed by ESO's Very Large Telescope
Thermal infrared images of Saturn from the VISIR instrument on ESO’s VLT (centre and right) and an amateur visible-light image (left) from Trevor Barry (Broken Hill, Australia) obtained on 19 January 2011 during the mature phase of the northern storm. The second image is taken at a wavelength...
Supernova 2003cg in the galaxy NGC 3169
This section of a picture from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the galaxy NGC 3169 and marks the location of the supernova SN 2003cg.
Wide-field image of the sky around the Fried Egg nebula
This visible light wide-field image of the region around the yellow hypergiant star IRAS 17163-3907 was created from photographs taken through blue, red and infrared filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The star appears close to the centre, indistinguishable from...
Wide-field view of NGC 253 from the VLT Survey Telescope
The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) has captured in sharp detail the beauty of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 253. This new portrait is probably the best wide-field view of this object and its surroundings ever taken. It demonstrates that the VST, the newest telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory,...
Digitized Sky Survey image of the Helix Nebula
This visible-light wide-field image of the region around the Helix Nebula was created from photographs taken through red and blue filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The nebula appears prominently at the centre of the image and many faint galaxies are also visible on careful...
IC 2944, nicknamed the Running Chicken Nebula
This new image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope shows the Running Chicken Nebula, a cloud of gas and newborn stars that lies around 6500 light-years away from us in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). Officially called IC 2944, or the Lambda Centauri...
Pandora’s Cluster — Hubble view of Abell 2744
This image from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the central regions of the remarkable merging galaxy cluster Abell 2744. This object has been nicknamed Pandora’s Cluster because of the many different and strange phenomena that were unleashed by a...
Close-up of the drama of star formation
This very detailed enhanced-colour image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the dramatic effects of very young stars on the dust and gas from which they were born in the star-forming region NGC 6729. The baby stars are invisible in this picture, being hidden behind dust clouds at the upper...
Pandora’s Cluster (combined Hubble and VLT view)
This image of galaxy cluster Abell 2744 combines data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, with an image taken with the ESO VLT. Hubble provides the central, most detailed part of the image, while the VLT offers a wider field of view. This object has been...
The COSMOS field (unannotated)
This very deep image shows the COSMOS field imaged by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). Huge numbers of very faint galaxies are visible. A new study of this field, combining data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory has turned up a big...
Highlights from the VST image of Omega Centauri
This montage shows nine small cutouts from the VST image of Omega Centauri. Although each of them only shows about 0.3% of the full image they are still richly detailed and display the exquisite image quality of the telescope and camera. The upper left panel shows the core of Omega Centauri,...
The brilliant star VFTS 682 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (annotated)
This view shows part of the very active star-forming region around the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small neighbour of the Milky Way. At the upper left is the brilliant but isolated star VFTS 682 and at the lower right is the very rich star cluster R 136. The origins of...
Wide-field view of the sky around the star HD 85512
This image shows the sky around the star HD 85512. The picture was created from photographs taken through red and blue filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The star lies close to the centre of the image, at first glance resembling many others in this rich field. The ...
Wide Field Imager view of a Milky Way look-alike, NGC 6744
This picture of the nearby galaxy NGC 6744 was taken with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla. The large spiral galaxy is similar to the Milky Way, making this image look like a picture postcard of our own galaxy sent from extragalactic space. The picture was...
Highlights from the VST image of Messier 17
This montage shows six cutouts from the new VST image of the star-forming region Messier 17, also known as the Omega Nebula or Swan Nebula. Although the wide field encompasses the entire nebula and its surroundings, the VST and OmegaCAM deliver sharp images that show many fascinating details.
Close-up of the drama of star formation (annotated)
This very detailed image of the star-forming region NGC 6729 from ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the dramatic effects of very young stars on the dust and gas from which they were born. The baby stars are invisible in this picture, being hidden behind dust clouds at the upper left of the...
X-rays, dark matter and galaxies in the cluster Abell 2744
This image combines visible light exposures of galaxy cluster Abell 2744 taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, with X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and a mathematical reconstruction of the location of dark...
Comparison of the field of view of VST/OmegaCAM and other telescopes
This image compares the field of view of OmegaCAM on the VST and several other telescope/camera combinations. The VST field is about four times the area of that of the Wide Field Imager and covers an area of sky more than 300 times greater than the imager on Hubble with the widest field, the...
Wide Field Imager view of the spiral galaxy NGC 247
This picture of the spiral galaxy NGC 247 was taken using the Wide Field Imager (WFI) at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. NGC 247 is thought to lie about 11 million light-years away in the constellation of Cetus (The Whale). It is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way and a member of...
Wide-field view of the sky around the brown dwarf binary CFBDSIR 1458+10
This visible light wide-field image of the region around the brown dwarf binary CFBDSIR 1458+10 was created from photographs taken through red and blue filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The very cool brown dwarf double lies at the centre of the picture, but is too faint in...
Wide-field view of the sky around NGC 3521
This visible light wide-field image of the region around NGC 3521 was created from photographs taken through blue, red and infrared filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The galaxy appears close to the centre. The field of view is approximately 2.9 degrees across.
Digitized Sky Survey image of Eta Carinae Nebula
This image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is approximately 4.7 x 4.9 degrees.
Wide-field view of the region around the Antennae Galaxies
This image is a wide-field colour composite of region of sky around the Antennae Galaxies made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is 2.8 x 2.8 degrees.
Wide-field view of the sky around a giant space blob
This visible-light wide-field image of the region around the giant Lyman-alpha blob LAB1 was created from photographs taken through blue and red filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The blob itself lies at the centre of the image but, despite being huge and very ...
Wide-field view of the sky around NGC 3169 and NGC 3166
This visible-light wide-field image of the region around NGC 3169 and NGC 3166 was created from photographs taken through red and blue filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The disturbed galactic pair appears close to the centre and several other galaxies are visible in the...
Wide-field view of the sky around the most remote quasar
This visible-light wide-field image of the region around ULAS J1120+0641, the most distant quasar found so far, was created from photographs taken through red and blue filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The object itself lies very close to the centre and is not visible in...
A wide-field view of the sky around the young star T Cha (annotated)
This visible-light wide-field image of the region around the young star T Cha was created from photographs taken through red and blue filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The star appears close to the centre. Some of the dust associated with this star-forming region is...
Wide-field view of the sky around NGC 3582
This visible light wide-field image of the region around NGC 3582 was created from photographs taken through red and blue filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The star formation region appears close to the centre and is just one part of a vast complex of gas and dust in the...
McNeil's Nebula in Messier 78
In these images we compare a colour picture of the Messier 78 region taken in 2006 with the 4-metre Mayall telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona (below) with a new image that was captured using the Wide Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory, Chile (above)....
The most remote mature cluster of galaxies yet found
This image is a composite of very long exposures taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and the NAOJ’s Subaru telescope on Hawaii. Most of the visible objects are very faint and distant galaxies. The clump of faint red objects to the right of centre is the most remote mature cluster of...
Wide-field view of the Meathook galaxy
This picture of the Meathook Galaxy (NGC 2442) was taken by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile. It shows a much broader view than the Hubble image, although less detailed. This view includes the whole galaxy and the surrounding sky, and clearly shows the...
Hubble image of the Meathook galaxy
This close-up Hubble view of the Meathook Galaxy (NGC 2442) focuses on the more compact of its two asymmetric spiral arms as well as the central regions. The spiral arm was the location of a supernova that exploded in 1999. These observations were made in 2006 in order to study the aftermath of...
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NASA’s Universe of Learning materials are based upon work supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC65A to the Space Telescope Science Institute, working in partnership with Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The award is part of NASA’s Science Activation program, which strives to further enable NASA science experts and content into the learning environment more effectively and efficiently with learners of all ages.