Immagine della settimana

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potw1040 — Immagine della settimana
ALMA antennas on Chajnantor
04 Ottobre 2010: Two of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 12-metre antennas gaze at the sky at the observatory’s Array Operations Site (AOS), high on the Chajnantor plateau at an altitude of 5000 metres in the Chilean Andes. Eight antennas have been installed at the AOS since November 2009. More antennas will be installed on the Chajnantor plateau during the next months and beyond, allowing astronomers to start producing early scientific results with the ALMA system around late 2011. After this, the interferometer will steadily grow to reach its full scientific potential, with at least 66 antennas. ALMA is the largest ground-based astronomy project in existence, and will comprise a giant array of 12-metre submillimetre quality antennas, with baselines of up to about 16 kilometres. An additional, compact array of 7-metre and 12-metre antennas will complement the main array. The ALMA project is an international collaboration between Europe, East Asia and North ...
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potw1039 — Immagine della settimana
A Solargraph taken from APEX at Chajnantor
27 Settembre 2010: This unusual and artistic image, made using a technique known as "solargraphy" in which a pinhole camera captures the movement of the Sun in the sky over many months, was taken from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope on the plateau of Chajnantor. The plateau is also where ESO, together with international partners, is building the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The solar trails in the image were recorded over half a year and clearly show the quality of the 5000-metre altitude site, high in the Chilean Andes, for astronomical observations. The idea for creating the solargraphs at ESO's telescopes came from Bob Fosbury, an astronomer based at ESO Headquarters in Germany, after learning about the technique from Finnish artist Tarja Trygg. Trygg provided the cameras, known as "cans". The cans are constructed from small black plastic canisters used for storing 35 mm film cassettes. A pinhole in a sheet ...
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potw1038 — Immagine della settimana
Starlight shines brightly above Paranal
20 Settembre 2010: After the Sun sets at ESO’s Paranal Observatory darkness descends, but the black sky is speckled with a glorious myriad of sparkling stars. This 15-second exposure demonstrates just how dazzling the skies above Paranal are. Located high in the Atacama Desert in Chile far from any sources of light pollution, on a clear moonless night it is possible to see your shadow cast by the light of the Milky Way alone. Says visual artist and ESO Photo Ambassador José Francisco Salgado, “The skies at Paranal are among the darkest and steadiest I have photographed. I love photographing observatories and at Paranal it's incredible how you can still see just with starlight and zodiacal light!” In the image the stars of the Milky Way seem to be pouring forth from the open dome of the telescope. The brightest patch close to the telescope is the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), which contains ...
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potw1037 — Immagine della settimana
The Great Barred Spiral Galaxy
13 Settembre 2010: Spiralling around, 61 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax (the Furnace), NGC 1365 is enormous. At 200000 light-years across, it is one of the largest galaxies known to astronomers. This, plus the sharply defined bar of old stars across its structure is why it is also known as the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy. Astronomers think that the Milky Way may look very similar to this galaxy, but at half the size. The bright centre of the galaxy is thought to be due to huge amounts of superhot gas ejected from the ring of material circling a central black hole. Young luminous hot stars, born out of the interstellar clouds, give the arms a prominent appearance and a blue colour. The bar and spiral pattern rotates, with one full turn taking about 350 million years. This image combines observations performed through three different filters (B, V, R) with the 1.5-metre ...
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potw1036-it — Immagine della settimana
Un fascio laser verso il centro della Via Lattea
06 Settembre 2010: A meta' Agosto del 2010 ESO Photo Ambassador Yuri Beletsky ha scattato questa fantastica foto delloOsservatorio ESO a Paranal. Un gruppo di astronomi stavano osservando il centro della Via Lattea usando la struttura stella laser guida in Yepun, uno dei quattro Unit Telescopes del Very Large Telescope (VLT). Il raggio di Yepun attraversa l'atmosfera del maestoso cielo del sud e crea una stella artificiale ad un'altitudine di 90 km nella mesosfera della terra. La Stella Laser Guida (LGS) fa parte del VLTadaptive optics system ed e' usato come referenza per corregere l'effetto sfuocato dell'atmosfera sulle immagini. Il colore del laser e' esattamente calibrato per energizzare uno strato di atomi di sodio ce si trovano in uno dei piu' superficiali strati dell'atmosfera - si puo' riconoscere il colore familiare delle lampade stradali al sodio nel colore del laser. Si pensa che questo strato di atomi di sodio sia un resto lasciato ...
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potw1035 — Immagine della settimana
Arp 271 — galaxies drawn together*
30 Agosto 2010: NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are two spiral galaxies of similar sizes engaged in a dramatic dance. It is not certain that this interaction will end in a collision and ultimately a merging of the two galaxies, although the galaxies have already been affected. Together known as Arp 271, this dance will last for tens of millions of years, creating new stars as a result of the mutual gravitational attraction between the galaxies, a pull seen in the bridge of stars already connecting the two. Located 90 million light-years away towards the constellation of Virgo (the Virgin), the Arp 271 pair is about 130 000 light-years across. It was originally discovered in 1785 by William Herschel. Quite possibly, our own Milky Way will undergo a similar collision in about five billion years with the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy, which is now located about 2.6 million light-years away from the Milky Way. ...
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potw1034 — Immagine della settimana
Starry night at Paranal*
23 Agosto 2010: During a night at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the stars seem to rotate around the southern celestial pole. The skies over Paranal provide splendid observing opportunities for the astronomers below. At the observatory on Cerro Paranal in the dry Atacama Desert of Chile, one of the observatory’s four 8.2-metre telescopes can be seen on the right performing its nightly task of looking at the heavens. Two of the four 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes are also seen in the picture. The dry, high environment at 2600 metres above sea level, and the extraordinarily advanced equipment makes observing time at the VLT highly sought after by astronomers around the world.
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potw1033 — Immagine della settimana
The 2010 Perseids over the VLT
16 Agosto 2010: Every year in mid-August the Perseid meteor shower has its peak. Meteors, colloquially known as “shooting stars”, are caused by pieces of cosmic debris entering Earth’s atmosphere at high velocity, leaving a trail of glowing gases. Most of the particles that cause meteors are smaller than a grain of sand and usually disintegrate in the atmosphere, only rarely reaching the Earth’s surface as a meteorite. The Perseid shower takes place as the Earth moves through the stream of debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. In 2010 the peak was predicted to take place between 12–13 August 2010. Despite the Perseids being best visible in the northern hemisphere, due to the path of Comet Swift-Tuttle's orbit, the shower was also spotted from the exceptionally dark skies over ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. In order not to miss any meteors in the display, ESO Photo Ambassador Stéphane Guisard set up 3 cameras ...
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potw1032 — Immagine della settimana
Frenzied star birth in Haro 11
09 Agosto 2010: Haro 11 appears to shine gently amid clouds of gas and dust, but this placid facade belies the monumental rate of star formation occurring in this “starburst” galaxy. By combining data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have created a new image of this incredibly bright and distant galaxy. The team of astronomers from Stockholm University, Sweden, and the Geneva Observatory, Switzerland, have identified 200 separate clusters of very young, massive stars. Most of these are less than 10 million years old. Many of the clusters are so bright in infrared light that astronomers suspect that the stars are still emerging from the cloudy cocoons where they were born. The observations have led the astronomers to conclude that Haro 11 is most likely the result of a merger between a galaxy rich in stars and a younger, gas-rich galaxy. Haro 11 is found to ...
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potw1031-it — Immagine della settimana
Cacciatori extraterresti a La Silla
02 Agosto 2010: Nella ricerca di mondi distanti, pochi telescopi hanno avuto cosi' tanto successo come il telescopio 3.6 metri (ESO's 3.6-metre telescope) e il Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope, che sono mostrati in questa immagine. Il telescopio di 3.6 metri fornisce dimora a HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher), uno spettrografo di una precisione senza pari e possessore di diversi record nel campo della ricerca di pianeti extraterrestri, compresa la scoperta dell'ultimo enorme pianeta extraterrestre e di quello piu' piccolo mai misurato. Insieme a HARPS, il telescopio Leonhard Euler ha permesso agli astronomi di scoprire sei pianeti extraterrestri da un campione di 27 che orbitavano nella direzione opposta alla rotazione della loro stella ospitante - fornendo un'inaspettata e importante sfida alle recenti teorie sulla formazione di pianeti. All'altezza di 2400 metri sopra il livello del mare nella parte sud del deserto Atacama in Cile, La Silla e' stato il primo luogo ...
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potw1030 — Immagine della settimana
Arp 22 stretches out
26 Luglio 2010: NGC 4027, also known as Arp 22, stretches its single extended spiral arm in this face-on image. Located about 75 million light-years away in the constellation of Corvus (the Crow), this barred spiral galaxy is identified as a peculiar galaxy by this extended arm, thought to be the result of a collision with another galaxy millions of years ago — most likely a small galaxy known as NGC 4027A. NGC 4027 is part of the NGC 4038 Group, a group of galaxies that also contains the famous distorted couple known as the Antennae Galaxies (see eso0209 and heic0615). This image is based on data collected with the ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (EFOSC) attached to the 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile. The data were collected through three broadband filters (B, V and R) and two narrowband filters (Hα and doubly ionised ...
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potw1029 — Immagine della settimana
A European ALMA antenna takes a ride on a transporter
19 Luglio 2010: A European Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) antenna takes a ride on Lore, one of the ALMA Transporters, at the 2900-metre altitude Operations Support Facility in the Chilean Andes. This took place on 23 June 2010, and was the first time that European antennas have been lifted with the transporters, a procedure that was fully successful, with both moves completed in a single day. The first two European antennas for ALMA have been moved to two new outdoor foundation pads in order to perform tests of their dish surface accuracy. In this process, known as holography, the antennas observe the signals from a special transmitter located on a nearby tower. In order to allow parallel assembly of several antennas, two new foundations have recently been built. As the newly built foundations lie between the original positions of the two antennas and the holography tower, the antennas were moved to the ...
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potw1028 — Immagine della settimana
Partial solar eclipse over the VLT
12 Luglio 2010: Yesterday 11 July 2010, between 20:15 and 22:51 CEST, the path of a total solar eclipse streaked across the Pacific Ocean touching several small islands including Tuamotu in French Polynesia, Mangaia in the Cook Islands and Chile's Easter Island. The total eclipse brushed the southern mainland of Chile, and was seen as a partial eclipse in the rest of the country. At ESO's Paranal Observatory ESO Photo Ambassador Yuri Beletsky snapped this photo near the mid-point of the eclipse. On the mainland of Chile, outside the zone of complete darkness, the partial eclipse was visible from ESO's Paranal Observatory. With the naked eye, eclipses are difficult — and dangerous — to watch until they reach totality, as the Sun is so bright. But a filter reduces the glare and here reveals the advancing disk of the Moon as it moves across the face of the Sun. In this photograph, the ...
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potw1026 — Immagine della settimana
The oddest member of the Leo Triplet
28 Giugno 2010: NGC 3628 is a spiral galaxy and a member of a small, but conspicuous group of galaxies located about 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation of Leo (the Lion). The other distinguished members of this family, known collectively as the Leo Triplet, are two well-known prominent spiral galaxies, Messier 65 and Messier 66 (not seen on the image), which were both discovered in 1780 by famous French comet hunter Charles Messier. NGC 3628 is the faintest of the trio and escaped Messier’s observations with his rather small telescope. It was discovered and catalogued by William Herschel only four years later. NGC 3628 hides its spiral structure because it is seen perfectly edge-on, exactly as we observe the Milky Way on a clear night. Its most distinctive feature is a dark band of dust that lies across the plane of the disc and which is visibly distorted outwards, as a ...
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potw1025 — Immagine della settimana
Celestial Tic-Tac-Toe: Mercury, Venus and the Moon align
21 Giugno 2010: One morning, in March 2008, a rare and beautiful sight greeted Yuri Beletsky, astronomer at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) observatory at Paranal in northern Chile. In the sky above the observing deck, the planets Mercury and Venus were in alignment above the Moon, in a celestial event known as a conjunction. Mercury, the smallest of the planets and shining highest in the sky in this image, orbits closest to the Sun of all the eight planets in our Solar System. Venus comes next, followed by Earth and its Moon. So this image captures the full stock of major astronomical bodies that pass between Earth and its host star. To the bottom left, seen as an impressive silhouette, and accompanying this cosmic chance encounter, is one of the four 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) deployed at Paranal. These mobile telescopes are used for interferometry, an astronomical technique that essentially combines the ...
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potw1024 — Immagine della settimana
A quintuplet of ALMA antennas — and then there were five
14 Giugno 2010: On the Chajnantor plateau, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is growing. On 31 May 2010, the number of ALMA’s state-of-the-art antennas on the 5000-metre-altitude plateau in the Chilean Andes increased to five. This photograph shows the five 12-metre diameter antennas at the Array Operations Site, clustered on the closely spaced foundation pads of what will be ALMA’s “Atacama Compact Array”. When complete, ALMA will have fifty-four 12-metre and twelve 7-metre diameter antennas, operating together as an interferometer: the signals from the individual antennas are combined in a specialised supercomputer — the ALMA correlator — so that the array of antennas acts as a single, giant telescope. The team of astronomers and engineers have now achieved a successful test linking all of these first five antennas together as an interferometer. This result follows the successful first measurements with a pair of antennas in October 2009 (see ESO Announcement) and the ...
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potw1023-it — Immagine della settimana
Un meraviglioso tramonto della Luna — un’incredibile veduta del Cerro Paranal, sede del Very Large Telescope
07 Giugno 2010: Quando la Luna piena tramonta, il Sole sta per sorgere sull’orizzonte opposto. Il VLT (Very Large Telescope) ha già chiuso gli occhi, dopo una lunga notte di osservazioni, gli operatori del telescopio e alcuni astronomi dormono, mentre tecnici, ingegneri e altri astronomi si svegliano per una nuova giornata di lavoro. Le operazioni non si fermano mai nell’osservatorio astronomico da terra più produttivo al mondo. Il membro dell’ESO Gordon Gillet ha dato il benvenuto al nuovo giorno catturando questa stupenda immagine da 14 km di distanza, sulla strada vicina al Cerro Armazones, la vetta scelta di recente dal Consiglio dell’ESO come sede per il futuro telescopio E-ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope) da 40 metri. Al contrario di ciò che si potrebbe pensare, questa immagine non è un fotomontaggio. La Luna appare grande perché è vista vicino all’orizzonte e la nostra percezione è distorta dalla prossimità dei riferimenti al suolo. Per avere ...
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potw1022 — Immagine della settimana
The Blinking Galaxy
31 Maggio 2010: NGC 6118, a grand-design spiral galaxy, shines bright in this image, displaying its central bar and tight spiral arms from its home in the constellation of Serpens (The Snake). The galaxy is sometimes known to amateur astronomers as the “Blinking Galaxy” because this relatively faint, fuzzy object would appear to flick into existence when viewed through their telescopes in a certain orientation, and then suddenly disappear again as the eye position shifted. The brilliant blue star-forming regions of the galaxy, where hot young stars are born, are beautifully illuminated, even from over 80 million light-years away. In 2004, regular observers of this galaxy saw a “new star” appear near the edge of the galaxy (above the centre of the image). Far from being a new star, this object, supernova 2004dk, is in fact the final, powerful burst of light emitted by the explosion of a star. Though shy to lesser ...
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potw1021 — Immagine della settimana
Building connections with EVALSO
24 Maggio 2010: Alongside the B-710 road, between the Paranal airstrip and the turn-off to Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama Desert, a crew is hard at work laying a fibre data cable. The cable will connect the observatories at Paranal (ESO) and Armazones (OCA) with the main scientific data backbone in South America, bridging the gap between these remote outposts and the scientific community thirsty for their data. This new cable, laid down by ESO, is part of the EVALSO (Enabling Virtual Access to Latin-American Southern Observatories) project that aims to create an entire high-speed data infrastructure between these two astronomical sites in Chile and the rest of the scientific and academic community. Once completed, the high-speed interconnectivity will be from the Santiago area, via the main Chilean backbone along the Panamerican Highway, to the ESO site on Cerro Paranal, which houses the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and to Cerro Armazones, currently ...
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potw1020 — Immagine della settimana
Great progress for the ALMA Santiago Central Office building
17 Maggio 2010: The Santiago Central Office building, the soon-to-be headquarters of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) project in the Vitacura district of the Chilean capital. The new building is rapidly approaching completion and is adjacent to ESO’s Santiago offices. It was built by ESO as part of its responsibilities as the European ALMA partner. The ALMA Santiago Central Office building covers nearly 7000 square metres, stands two storeys tall, and includes an underground parking area for 130 cars. ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence, is a revolutionary astronomical telescope, comprising an array of 66 giant 12-metre and 7-metre diameter antennas observing at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths. The facility is currently under construction on the 5000-metre high Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes. ALMA is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile.
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