Starship Asterisk*

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

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This image, captured by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the spiral galaxy NGC 5714, about 130 million light-years away in the constellation of Boötes (the Herdsman). NGC 5714 is classified as a Sc spiral galaxy, but its spiral arms — the dominating feature of spiral galaxies — are almost impossible to see, as NGC 1787 presents itself at an almost perfectly edge-on angle.

Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, NGC 5714 was host to a fascinating and rare event in 2003. A faint supernova appeared about 8000 light-years below the central bulge of NGC 5714. Supernovae are the huge, violent explosions of dying stars, and the one that exploded in NGC 5714 — not visible in this much later image — was classified as a Type Ib/c supernova and named SN 2003dr. It was particularly interesting because its spectrum showed strong signatures of calcium.

Calcium-rich supernovae are rare and hence of great interest to astronomers. Astronomers still struggle to explain these particular explosions as their existence presents a challenge to both observation and theory. In particular, their appearance outside of galaxies, their lower luminosity compared to other supernovae, and their rapid evolution are still open questions for researchers.

Credit: Petr Horálek/ESO

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This week’s featured image highlights a handful of the telescopes residing at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile. The star of the show, framed perfectly by the beautiful arch of the Milky Way, sits directly in the middle of the photograph — the Danish 1.54-metre telescope.

Operational since 1979, this trusty telescope has helped astronomers to make all kinds of cosmic discoveries, from understanding more about violently merging neutron stars to detecting planets around other stars. It now performs follow-up observations of gamma-ray bursts, some of the most energetic events in the Universe.

This image, taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek, shows the heart of the Milky Way, both the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the constellations of Orion (The Hunter) and the Southern Cross, and the glare of distant settlements, all of which create vibrant bursts and flashes of colour across the frame. Towards the distant horizon, hues of red and green light up the sky — these colours are produced by a phenomenon called airglow.

Spacetelescope.org wrote:

Massive galaxies — and their globular clusters — are thought to form in two phases: first comes an early collapse accompanied by a giant burst of star formation, which forms red, metal-rich clusters, followed by a later accumulation of material, which brings in bluer, metal-poor material.

The discovery of NGC 1277’s red clusters confirms that the galaxy is a genuine antique that bypassed this second phase, raising important questions for scientists on how galaxies form and evolve: a hotly debated topic in modern astronomy.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Beasley (IAC)

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This idyllic scene, packed with glowing galaxies, has something truly remarkable at its core: an untouched relic of the ancient Universe. This relic can be seen in the large galaxy at the centre of the frame, a lenticular galaxy named NGC 1277. This galaxy is a member of the famous Perseus Cluster — one of the most massive objects in the known Universe, located some 220 million light-years from Earth.

NGC 1277 has been dubbed a “relic of the early Universe” because all of its stars appear to have formed about 12 billion years ago. To put this in perspective, the Big Bang is thought to have happened 13.8 billion years ago. Teeming with billions of old, metal-rich stars, this galaxy is also home to many ancient globular clusters: spherical bundles of stars that orbit a galaxy like satellites. Uniquely, the globuar clusters of NGC 1277 are mostly red and metal-rich — very different to the blue, metal-poor clusters usually seen around similarly-sized galaxies. In astronomy, a metal is any element heavier than hydrogen and helium; these heavier elements are fused together in the hot cores of massive stars and scattered throughout the Universe when these stars explode as they die. In this way, a star’s metal content is related to its age: stars that form later contain greater amounts of metal-rich material, since previous generations of stars have enriched the cosmos from which they are born.

Massive galaxies — and their globular clusters — are thought to form in two phases: first comes an early collapse accompanied by a giant burst of star formation, which forms red, metal-rich clusters, followed by a later accumulation of material, which brings in bluer, metal-poor material. The discovery of NGC 1277’s red clusters confirms that the galaxy is a genuine antique that bypassed this second phase, raising important questions for scientists on how galaxies form and evolve: a hotly debated topic in modern astronomy.

Image Credit: Yuri Beletsky (LCO)/ESO

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This spectacular shot from ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile was captured by by ESO Photo Ambassador Yuri Beletsky, and reveals all manner of astronomical treats!

The central plane of our galaxy stretches, slightly curved, across the frame, peppered with bright patches of gas and dark, weaving dust lanes. Although initially a little hard to see against the intricate cosmic backdrop, the constellation of Orion (The Hunter) can be seen to the top left of the frame.

Multiple pink clouds, produced by the faint glow of ionised hydrogen gas, appear to extend beyond the band of the Milky Way, indicating the presence of hot, young new stars. One of these areas is Barnard's Loop, which encircles the famous Orion Nebula and can be seen curving around Orion’s Belt.

The MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope sits beneath the colourful night sky, where it is currently involved in research chasing the aftermath of some of the most energetic explosions in the Universe — gamma-ray bursts. The telescope is also used to image the nearby cosmos with the attached Wide Field Imager (WFI).