APOD and General Astronomy Discussion Forum
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viewtopic.php?t=40837starsurfer wrote: ↑Sun Aug 16, 2020 10:27 pm NGC 2899
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso2012a/
Copyright: ESO
Incredible splashes of colour — greens, reds, blues, and every colour in between — paint the night sky above ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, illuminating the barren desert landscape below. The light from billions of stars, glowing nebulae, and other cosmic phenomena creates the giant arch of the Milky Way, which stretches across the sky and perfectly frames the Very Large Telescope (VLT) sitting atop the peak at the centre of the image (Cerro Paranal).
This particular view was taken from the site of ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). The winding road between VISTA and the VLT can be seen below, illuminated by faint yellow lights. These are, notably, the only human-made lights visible in the entire scene — Paranal staff take great care not to create unnecessary light pollution that may hinder the astronomical work at the world-class observing site.
The Milky Way is not the only galaxy visible in this image. Two of our home galaxy’s natural satellites and nearest neighbours — the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds — can be seen as diffuse blobs of light tucked beneath the arch, bathed in natural green and red airglow.
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spectacular galaxy NGC 2442.
This galaxy was host to a supernova explosion, known as SN2015F, that was created by a white dwarf star. The white dwarf was part of a binary star system and syphoned mass from its companion, eventually becoming too greedy and taking on more than it could handle. This unbalanced the star and triggered runaway nuclear fusion that eventually led to an intensely violent supernova explosion.
SN2015F was spotted in March 2015 in the galaxy named NGC 2442, nicknamed the Meathook Galaxy owing to its extremely asymmetrical and irregular shape. The supernova shone brightly for quite some time and was easily visible from Earth through even a small telescope until later that summer.
Susanna Kohler wrote:This stunning image of the Sun and its corona (click for a closer look) is composited from hundreds of individual frames captured by Nicolas Lefaudeux at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The occasion: a team effort to image a total solar eclipse in July 2019.
In a recent Research Note led by Christian Lockwood (Williams College), you can read about how the team gathered images (like those composited above) using three different observatories in Chile during the eclipse. Lockwood and collaborators then combined these ground-based images — which had high resolution and a wide field of view — with close-in observations of the solar disk made by space-based satellites.
By putting these overlapping observations together, the team could paint a full picture of the Sun’s tenuous, extended outer atmosphere during solar minimum. To learn more about the project, check out the article below.
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 Spiral Galaxy, after its two central bar-shaped structures, made up of stars.
The two bars of NGC 1365 are a rare phenomenon and are thought to have originated by the combined effects of galaxy rotation and the complex dynamics of the stars. Its largest bar of stars, too large for its structure to be visible in this image, connects its outer spiral arms to its centre. What we can see is the much smaller second bar of stars, nestled within the main bar. It is likely this secondary bar acts independently of the main bar, rotating more rapidly than the rest of the galaxy.
Standing for Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, the MUSE instrument captured this image in optical and infrared light, showing the gas and dust in the central region of the galaxy. Installed on Yepun, one of the four 8.2-metre telescopes that make up the VLT, the capabilities of this instrument have allowed for some of the most comprehensive and detailed studies of our Universe to date, including surveys of distant galaxies, supermassive black holes and even the source of gravitational waves.
While appearing as a delicate and light veil draped across the sky, this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope actually depicts a small section of the Cygnus supernova blast wave, located around 2400 light-years away. The name of the supernova remnant comes from its position in the northern constellation of Cygnus (The Swan), where it covers an area 36 times larger than the full moon.
The original supernova explosion blasted apart a dying star about 20 times more massive than our Sun between 10 000 and 20 000 years ago. Since then, the remnant has expanded 60 light-years from its centre. The shockwave marks the outer edge of the supernova remnant and continues to expand at around 350 kilometres per second. The interaction of the ejected material and the low-density interstellar material swept up by the shockwave forms the distinctive veil-like structure seen in this image.
bystander wrote: ↑Mon Aug 24, 2020 3:07 pm A Phenomenal View of a Phenomenal Spiral
ESO Picture of the Week | VLT | MUSE | 2020 Aug 24The 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 Spiral Galaxy, after its two central bar-shaped structures, made up of stars.
The two bars of NGC 1365 are a rare phenomenon and are thought to have originated by the combined effects of galaxy rotation and the complex dynamics of the stars. Its largest bar of stars, too large for its structure to be visible in this image, connects its outer spiral arms to its centre. What we can see is the much smaller second bar of stars, nestled within the main bar. It is likely this secondary bar acts independently of the main bar, rotating more rapidly than the rest of the galaxy.
Standing for Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, the MUSE instrument captured this image in optical and infrared light, showing the gas and dust in the central region of the galaxy. Installed on Yepun, one of the four 8.2-metre telescopes that make up the VLT, the capabilities of this instrument have allowed for some of the most comprehensive and detailed studies of our Universe to date, including surveys of distant galaxies, supermassive black holes and even the source of gravitational waves.
In this image, made with the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), young, radio-emitting jets of material emerge from the core of an elliptical galaxy some 500 million light-years from Earth. After NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected high-energy gamma rays coming from the object, scientists used the VLBA to make high-resolution images of the galaxy, dubbed TXS 0128+554.
This image is a composite of six VLBA images made at observing frequencies ranging from 2.2 GigaHertz (GHz) to 22.2 GHz. The broad lobes on either side of the bright core are the result of jet activity that began roughly 80 years ago. The gap between these lobes and the central region indicates, the scientists said, that the jet activity stopped sometime after that, then resumed about 10 years ago.
“These are among the youngest known jets in such systems, and only a handful are known to emit gamma-rays,” said Matthew Lister, of Purdue University.
The bright edges of the lobes are where the ejected material, moving at about a third the speed of light, impacted material within the galaxy. The bright emitting areas total about 35 light-years across, and are at the core of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole about one million times the mass of the Sun resides. ... << Multi-frequency composite VLBA image of the galaxy TXS 0128+554, 500 million light years from Earth. The image shows young radio jets originating near a supermassive black hole at the core of the galaxy. The jets in this image started about 80 years ago, stopped, then resumed about 10 years ago. Animated sequence indicates the radio frequencies at which the images were made. Higher observing frequencies produce higher resolution, showing smaller details. >>
Hubble should do a mosaic of the whole thing!bystander wrote: ↑Mon Aug 24, 2020 3:16 pm At the Edge of the Blast
ESA Hubble Picture of the Week | 2020 Aug 24While appearing as a delicate and light veil draped across the sky, this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope actually depicts a small section of the Cygnus supernova blast wave, located around 2400 light-years away. The name of the supernova remnant comes from its position in the northern constellation of Cygnus (The Swan), where it covers an area 36 times larger than the full moon.
The original supernova explosion blasted apart a dying star about 20 times more massive than our Sun between 10 000 and 20 000 years ago. Since then, the remnant has expanded 60 light-years from its centre. The shockwave marks the outer edge of the supernova remnant and continues to expand at around 350 kilometres per second. The interaction of the ejected material and the low-density interstellar material swept up by the shockwave forms the distinctive veil-like structure seen in this image.
