Zdjęcie Tygodnia 2021

22 marca 2021: Humans have gazed up at the skies for a very long time, fascinated by the flowing shape of the Milky Way, the bright lights of the stars and planets, and the dark patches that obscure regions of sky. Different cultures had various names for these features; this Picture of the Week shows one object that has taken on several different identities over time, alongside an antenna of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). At the very top of the frame, within the band of the Milky Way, lies a pair of bright stars. These form part of Crux (The Southern Cross), one of the most recognisable constellations in the southern sky. Just below Crux, a dark, irregular shape is silhouetted against the central band of our galaxy. This is a prominent dark nebula lying just 600 light-years away: a giant cloud of molecules so dense it blocks out the light ...

15 marca 2021: At first glance, this image may be more than a little confusing — is the domed telescope at the centre of the image part of a framed roadside photograph? Is it floating in mid-air? What, exactly, is going on? Sadly, nothing as exciting as a levitating telescope — this is simply a trick of peculiar perspective and clever camerawork. Here, the Danish 1.54-metre telescope is perfectly framed and reflected in one of the many roadside mirrors around ESO’s La Silla Observatory. The telescope appears to point towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) as if it were observing. The LMC is a small nearby galaxy that orbits the Milky Way and can be seen lurking in the upper left of the image. Due to the extremely sensitive technique used, a soft green radiance known as airglow, caused by the faint emission of light in Earth’s atmosphere, can be seen sweeping across ...

8 marca 2021: Even after the Sun has set over ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, the site is not truly dark. Although light pollution is practically non-existent at the remote site high up in the Atacama Desert, as daylight disappears the flowing dunes are instead illuminated by the dazzling light streaming from the stars above. The only artificial illumination for miles around comes from Paranal’s facilities, including the telescopes themselves and the Residencia, photographed here. A true oasis in the desert, the Residencia is a refuge from the harsh environment of the Atacama. The astronomers and other employees who work at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, located just a few kilometres down the road and home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope, can escape the arid environment after a long shift and enjoy a walk through the indoor garden or a dip in the swimming pool. The Residencia’s striking visual design is complemented by its world-leading ...

1 marca 2021: On occasion, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) at the Chajnantor plateau in northern Chile experiences something you might not associate with an astronomical observatory — snow! When snow falls and coats the landscape with a frosty glaze of cool white, the entire site is transformed. It becomes something almost subterranean or extra-terrestrial, reminiscent of a rebel base from Star Wars or a dystopian scene from Blade Runner. A number of ALMA’s 66 high-precision radio antennas can be seen in this image, connected by cleared pathways. The array spends its time observing the cool Universe and its phenomena — star formation, molecular clouds, and the early Universe.

22 lutego 2021: Appearing as a bird in flight, with wings outstretched in the expanse of space, SU Aur, a star much younger and more massive than the Sun, is surrounded by a giant planet-forming disc. This image, captured by the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the disc around SU Aur in unprecedented detail, including the long dust trails connected to it. The star itself is obscured by the instrument’s coronagraph, a device that blocks the light from the central star to allow the less bright features around it to stand out. The dust trails are composed of material from an encompassing nebula flowing into the disc. This nebula is likely the outcome of a collision between the star and a huge cloud of gas and dust, resulting in the unique shape of this planet-forming disc and the surrounding dust structure. A new study of SU Aur, which used ...

15 lutego 2021: It may not be as famous as Halley’s Comet, but Comet 252P/LINEAR can still put on a show! In late March 2016, the comet made one of the closest approaches to Earth of all comets in history — just over 5.3 million kilometres distant, compared to Halley’s closest approach of 87 million kilometres. The light of Comet 252P/LINEAR is not elongated in a classic tail, but instead appears as a soft round glow, tinged green due to molecules of diatomic carbon fluorescing in the sunlight. This image from April 2016 captures the distinctly green comet: you can spot it just above the Milky Way, between the galaxy’s starry arch and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) Unit Telescope at the centre of the frame. ESO’s VLT is located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, an ideal location for comet-spotting. Paranal is one of the most spectacular observatories in the world, situated ...

8 lutego 2021: Discovered in the year 1836 by John Herschel, NGC 6902 is a beautiful spiral galaxy located more than 130 million light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius, the Archer. This image was taken with MUSE, the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument attached to one of the four 8.2-metre telescopes that make up the VLT, and shows the galaxy from a unique perspective. A zoom in towards the galaxy’s centre, the image shows a nuclear ring where the orange glow of intense star formation is visible. Inside this ring lies a faint and small bar of stars. Researchers found that stars within it are distributed differently depending on their age, with younger stars aligned along the bar and older stars more dispersed. These locations of the young and old stars within the central bar of NGC 6902 confirm predictions made years earlier from simulations and models. This is the first time ...

1 lutego 2021: This beautiful photograph of the southern sky was taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek from ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Petr was not alone at Paranal. Standing to the bottom left of the image, next to an Auxiliary Telescope of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), are astrophotographers Yuri Beletsky and Babak Tafreshi, both of whom are also Photo Ambassadors for ESO. The duo are seen beneath a sky filled with stunning phenomena. The bright, dominant band of the Milky Way cuts across the sky, with the Gum Nebula (Gum 12) appearing at the top of the frame in red. The Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, is an especially bright blotch to the centre right — just below Canopus, the brightest star in both this view and the southern constellation of Carina. A beautiful green and reddish shimmer is also visible at the bottom ...

25 stycznia 2021: The road to ESO’s La Silla Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert appears to curve around the mountain and collide with the downward slope of the Milky Way in this Picture of the Week. Small yellow bulbs light up the road at regular intervals; it is prohibited to use headlights on these roads between dusk and dawn, as even dim lights can interfere significantly with telescope observations. The site enjoys some of the darkest night skies on Earth. The darkness, high altitude, and resulting dry air at La Silla make it an exceptional location for astronomy. In the foreground of this image, the Danish 1.54-metre telescope is performing its nightly observations. Its instruments have allowed astronomers to achieve several “firsts”. In 2005, for example, astronomers observed the afterglows of short gamma-ray bursts and showed that the bursts are likely caused by the dramatic collision of two neutron stars, while in ...

18 stycznia 2021: Far from civilisation, deep in the barren, mountainous terrain of Chile’s Atacama Desert, stand four pillars of modern astronomy: the enormous and angular enclosures of the Unit Telescopes (UTs) of ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The Sun’s diffuse orange glow peeking over the horizon is no match for the light display filling the sky above. Containing hundreds of billions of stars, the great bow of the Milky Way stretches across the panorama, dipping down to touch the horizon. The mottled look of our home galaxy is due to huge clouds of interstellar dust obscuring more distant starlight. Bright stars, celestial objects, and other phenomena in our cosmic neighbourhood hang like lanterns in the Chilean sky, backlit by ethereal red and green airglow. Alone, each UT can make magnificent observations of the Universe from their home at ESO’s Paranal Observatory — but the four telescopes can also work together and observe the ...

11 stycznia 2021: Captured with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), this image of the distant spiral galaxy NGC 1097 shows a textbook example of a star-bursting nuclear ring. Located 45 million light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Fornax, this ring lies at the very centre of its galaxy. It spans only 5,000 light years across, being dwarfed by the full size of its host galaxy, which extends some tens of thousands of light-years beyond its centre. The darker lanes seen in this MUSE image show dust, gas and debris from the galaxy (or possibly from a satellite galaxy), which are being funnelled into the supermassive black hole at its centre. This process heats up the surrounding matter forming an accretion disc around the black hole and launching huge amounts of energy into the surrounding area. Nearby dust is heated up and star formation accelerates in the area ...

4 stycznia 2021: ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) is one of the most advanced optical and infrared observatories in the world. This magnificent astronomical detective comprises an array of four individual Unit Telescopes — the large cylindrical domes visible in this image — each hosting a main mirror measuring 8.2 metres in diameter. It also includes four movable 1.8-metre diameter Auxiliary Telescopes — the, comparatively, small white, round domes seen to the left of the Unit Telescopes. The VLT has contributed to groundbreaking observations and discoveries, including snapping the first image of an extrasolar planet and observing the visible counterpart to a gravitational wave source. In this picture, the telescopes are resting, their domed eyelids firmly closed as they slumber at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile — but at night they will awaken to observe the Universe and make more fantastic discoveries.