Starship Asterisk*

Image Credit: ESO/Petr Horálek

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It looks like a tiny planet but this Picture of the Week actually captures ESO’s La Silla Observatory using a photography technique called stereographic projection, whereby a flat image is projected onto a sphere.

La Silla, home to several of the instruments in the ESO family, was inaugurated in 1969. As well as being the first ESO observatory, it has also been at the forefront of many scientific and technological firsts. ESO’s pioneering 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) was the first in the world to have a computer-controlled, or “active”, main mirror, leading the way for ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), where all four 8-meter mirrors are active.The High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument attached to the ESO 3.6-metre telescope (36) is a hugely successful exoplanet hunter, discovering among other things the first ‘Earth-like’ planet in a star’s habitable zone.

Above “Planet La Silla” arches the pearlescent arm of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. It is the arid conditions of the Atacama Desert in Chile that allow such a view, as La Silla experiences over 300 cloudless nights per year.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

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The spiral galaxy IC 1954 takes centre stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy, which lies approximately 45 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Horologium (The Clock), boasts a bright central bar and lazily winding spiral arms threaded with dark clouds of dust.

This portrait of IC 1954 was captured with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), and is one of a set of observations designed to take advantage of some telescope teamwork. Hubble observed groups of young stars in nearby galaxies at ultraviolet and optical wavelengths while the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) — a ground-based radio telescope — gathered data on star-forming discs and clouds of cold gas. Combining the two sets of observations allowed astronomers to join the dots and understand the connections between young stars and the clouds of cold gas which give rise to them.

These observations also lay the groundwork for future observations with the upcoming NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will peer into nearby galaxies and observe the earliest phases of star formation.

Image Credit: ESO/Mahdi Zamani

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The stunning arch of the Milky Way stretches across the Chilean night sky, accompanied by the Magellanic Clouds on the left and admired from the control building of ESO’s Paranal Observatory, home to the Very Large Telescope (VLT).

The Milky Way is between 100 000 and 200 000 light-years in diameter and is made up of billions of other stars besides our Sun. The galactic centre, seen here as the bright area to the top-left of the Milky Way arc, is 27 000 light-years away. It takes the Sun almost 250 million years to complete an orbit around the Milky Way centre, and it has done so approximately 20 times since it formed.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are just two of the Milky Way’s galactic neighbours. They orbit our Galaxy at a distance of about 160 000 and 200 000 light years, respectively. These dwarf galaxies have an irregular shape, possibly due to gravitational interactions between each other and with our Galaxy.

If the telescopes can be regarded as the eyes of the Paranal Observatory, the control building would be its brain. Along with various offices, it hosts the control room, from which all telescopes and instruments are controlled and pointed towards the cosmic objects to be observed, and where a first evaluation of the collected data is performed.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Treu

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Clustered at the centre of this image are six luminous spots of light, four of them forming a circle around a central pair. Appearances can be deceiving, however, as this formation is not composed of six individual galaxies, but only three: to be precise, a pair of galaxies and one distant quasar. Hubble data also indicates that there is a seventh spot of light in the very center, which is a rare fifth image of the distant quasar. This rare phenomenon is caused by the presence of two galaxies in the foreground that act as a lens.

These galaxies were imaged in spectacular detail by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which was installed on Hubble in 2009 during Hubble Servicing Mission 4, Hubble’s final servicing mission. The WFC3 was intended to operate until 2014, but 12 years after it was installed it continues to provide both top-quality data and fantastic images, such as this one.

The central pair of galaxies in this image are genuinely two separate galaxies. The four bright points circling them, and the fainter one in the very center, are actually five separate images of a single quasar (known as 2M1310-1714), an extremely luminous but distant object. The reason behind this “seeing quintuple” effect is a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when a celestial object with an enormous amount of mass — such as a pair of galaxies — causes the fabric of space to warp such that the light travelling through that space from a distant object is bent and magnified sufficiently that humans here on Earth can observe multiple magnified images of the far-away source. The quasar in this image actually lies further away from Earth than the pair of galaxies. The light from the quasar has been bent around the galaxy pair because of their enormous mass, giving the incredible appearance that the galaxy pair are surrounded by four quasars — whereas in reality, a single quasar lies far beyond them!

bystander wrote: ↑Mon Aug 09, 2021 3:29 pm Seeing Quintuple
ESA Hubble Picture of the Week | 2021 Aug 09

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Treu

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Clustered at the centre of this image are six luminous spots of light, four of them forming a circle around a central pair. Appearances can be deceiving, however, as this formation is not composed of six individual galaxies, but only three: to be precise, a pair of galaxies and one distant quasar. Hubble data also indicates that there is a seventh spot of light in the very center, which is a rare fifth image of the distant quasar. This rare phenomenon is caused by the presence of two galaxies in the foreground that act as a lens.

These galaxies were imaged in spectacular detail by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which was installed on Hubble in 2009 during Hubble Servicing Mission 4, Hubble’s final servicing mission. The WFC3 was intended to operate until 2014, but 12 years after it was installed it continues to provide both top-quality data and fantastic images, such as this one.

The central pair of galaxies in this image are genuinely two separate galaxies. The four bright points circling them, and the fainter one in the very center, are actually five separate images of a single quasar (known as 2M1310-1714), an extremely luminous but distant object. The reason behind this “seeing quintuple” effect is a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when a celestial object with an enormous amount of mass — such as a pair of galaxies — causes the fabric of space to warp such that the light travelling through that space from a distant object is bent and magnified sufficiently that humans here on Earth can observe multiple magnified images of the far-away source. The quasar in this image actually lies further away from Earth than the pair of galaxies. The light from the quasar has been bent around the galaxy pair because of their enormous mass, giving the incredible appearance that the galaxy pair are surrounded by four quasars — whereas in reality, a single quasar lies far beyond them!

Image Credit: ESO/ M. Zamani

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Dark lines criss-cross the Chilean sky at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, making the brightest region of the Milky Way play hide-and-seek with ESO’s VISTA telescope.

These lines, known as the Great Rift, are immense clouds of gas and dust located between the Solar System and the internal regions of the Milky Way. These clouds absorb most of the visible light trying to reach us from the billions of stars in the centre of our galaxy. Nonetheless, astronomers are still able to probe the inner Milky Way by observing infrared and radio light, which passes through the clouds without being absorbed, allowing us to literally “look through” the great rift.

Part of ESO’s Paranal Observatory, the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) is located on the peak next door to the one where the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) is perched. It is one of the largest telescopes for stellar surveys in the infrared, helping astronomers map the Universe and shed light on many cosmic mysteries such as the evolution of galaxies.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee, PHANGS-HST

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This jewel-bright image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 1385, a spiral galaxy 68 million light-years away from Earth, which lies in the constellation Fornax. The image was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which is often referred to as Hubble’s workhorse camera, thanks to its reliability and versatility. It was installed in 2009 when astronauts last visited Hubble, and 12 years later it remains remarkably productive.

NGC 1385’s home — the Fornax constellation — is not named after an animal or an ancient God, as are many of the other constellations. Fornax is simply the Latin word for a furnace. The constellation was named Fornax by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, a French astronomer who was born in 1713. Lacaiile named 14 of the 88 constellations that are still recognised today. He seems to have had a penchant for naming constellations after scientific instruments, including Antlia (the air pump), Norma (the ruler, or set square) and Telescopium (the telescope).