Zdjęcie Tygodnia 2022

27 grudnia 2022: This Picture of the Week shows the very early stages of a binary star system with some intriguing features. It’s a radio image taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, of which ESO is a partner. The two young stars, or protostars –– marked with star symbols –– are surrounded by a dusty disc. The colour represents the temperature distribution of the protostars and the surrounding area, with brighter yellow colours representing higher temperatures. There are three clumps of hot dust far away from the protostars, marked with crosses, but what’s heating them? A recent study, led by Maria Jose Maureira at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestial Physics in Germany, suggests that these regions are not only heated by the protostars but, most likely, also by shockwaves, similar to the ones produced when an airplane travels faster than the sound speed through air. These shocks can ...

19 grudnia 2022: As we are closing in on 2022, we want to send our best wishes to each and every one of you out there, from all of us at ESO, for the holidays and the new year. This year marked our 60th anniversary –– follow #ESO60Years to find out more –– and we want to thank you for following along our journey of exploring the Universe. We wish you a healthy end of the year and a wonderful start to 2023!

12 grudnia 2022: The NGC 3627 galaxy, also known as Messier 66, appears to be expelling flames out of its majestic spiral arms in this Picture of the Week. The “fire” actually marks clouds of cold molecular gas, which is the material out of which stars form, and has been captured using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, of which ESO is a partner. The bluish regions in the background reveal the pattern of older, already formed stars, imaged by the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) also in Chile. Located approximately 31 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo, NGC 3627 is one of the many galaxies observed as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) project. PHANGS is making high-resolution observations of nearby galaxies with telescopes operating across all colours or wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. Different wavelengths can ...

5 grudnia 2022: This Picture of the Week shows a stunning pastel vista of Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama Desert. At the end of the zigzagging mountain road are several cranes that are responsible for the gradual addition of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) to this skyline. The leftmost crane is almost 120 m tall, which conveys the sheer size of this facility. At 3046 metres above sea level, the ELT will be left high and dry, ideal conditions for astronomical observations. There will be many clear night skies ready to be exposed to the ELT’s enormous 39-metre primary mirror. The ELT will be able to better detect and study potentially habitable exoplanets, probe into the nature of black holes and dark matter, and may even lead us to unexpected evidence that leads us to question our understanding of fundamental physics. Link: Panoramic version of this image

28 listopada 2022: Construction on the world’s biggest eye on the sky, ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) continues at the summit of Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama Desert. As this Picture of the Week captured in October this year shows, the concrete structure that started taking shape in January is almost finished. This structure will support the 85-metre high steel dome, and within the next few weeks it will be ready for the installation of 36 mechanisms that will allow 360° rotation of the 6100-tonne dome structure. On the rightmost part of the picture the foundations of the chiller station are clearly visible. This station is one of many facilities designed to keep the telescope cold during the day so that at night it’s at the same temperature as its surroundings; this is key to minimising turbulence inside the dome and thermal deformations of the telescope. In the centre of this image ...

21 listopada 2022: The ESO 1.52-metre telescope gazes at the Milky Way from its home at La Silla Observatory in this Picture of the Week. The now retired telescope has uncovered many of the Universe's secrets. Its most popular instrument was the B&C spectrograph, used for almost 30 years to study stars, galaxies and comets. Another instrument, ECHELEC, helped astronomers understand the intense winds of Wolf-Rayet stars, and FEROS discovered exciting exoplanets. When the telescope was decommissioned in 2002, FEROS was moved to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, also in La Silla, where it still searches for distant new worlds. Through the dome’s opening we can see the pink-shaded Carina Nebula, home to some of the most massive and luminous stars in our galaxy. Further down, to the centre-left of the slit, there’s the Coalsack Nebula, a dark cloud of dust. Let’s finish with a quiz: the four stars of the Southern Cross, which ...

14 listopada 2022: The four Auxiliary Telescopes at ESO’s Paranal Observatory can be seen gazing up to the night sky in this Picture of the Week. With dark and pristine skies, Paranal is one of the best places on Earth to study the universe from. As seen in this spectacular image, the view is really full to the brim of exciting things to look at. For instance, take a closer look to the right of the Milky Way band, at the two clouds that look like galactic fireworks. These are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, dwarf galaxies that are trapped by the gravity of the Milky Way. In the Mapuche language in south-central Chile they are known as lafken, labken or künchalabken (“the lagoons”), and also rünanko (“the water wells”). [1] Peering closer to the horizon we see subtle shades of green and red, but what is it? This is called airglow ...

7 listopada 2022: This Picture of the Week shows a new view of NGC 3603 (left) and NGC 3576 (right), two stunning nebulas imaged with ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA). This infrared image peers through the dust in these nebulas, revealing details hidden in optical images. NGC 3603 and NGC 3576 are 22,000 and 9,000 lightyears away from us, respectively. Inside these extended clouds of dust and gas, new stars are born, gradually changing the shapes of the nebulas via intense radiation and powerful winds of charged particles. Given their proximity, astronomers have the opportunity to study the intense star formation process that is as common in other galaxies but harder to observe due to the vast distances. The two nebulas were catalogued by John Frederick William Herschel in 1834 during a trip to South Africa, where he wanted to compile stars, nebulas and other objects in the sky ...

31 października 2022: Ever wondered what the inside of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) looks like? Wonder no more! In this Picture of the Week we invite you into the dome of the Unit Telescope 3 (Melipal) to take a closer look. With this fisheye view of the internal structure of Melipal, the whole telescope and its dome is caught on camera. The main mirror, measuring an impressive 8.2 metres in diameter, weighs in at more than 23 tonnes. To support the mirror and other components and make sure they’re kept steady during observations, a sturdy steel frame is required. The whole movable structure of the telescope weighs about 430 tonnes, like a ​​a fully loaded jumbo jet! Yet, it can be smoothly moved by hand because it’s perfectly balanced and rests on oil-film bearings. The dome containing the telescope is a sturdy steel enclosure; it not only provides protection from the harsh ...

24 października 2022: In this picture of the week we can see the well-defined arms of the spiral galaxy NGC 4254, also known as the Coma Pinwheel or Messier 99. It’s called a grand design spiral galaxy because of its distinctive pinwheel shape with prominent arms. Since Charles Messier first observed it in the 18th century, modern technology has allowed us to observe galaxies like this in significantly greater detail. This image is a composite of data taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), co-owned by ESO. The VLT data, shown in blue and purple tones, was captured with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument, mapping the distribution of stars. The ALMA data –– shown here by the red and orange regions –– originates from cold clouds of gas which can eventually collapse into stars. Comparing these two datasets allows for a better understanding of how ...

17 października 2022: With advanced instruments designed to catch the light from extrasolar worlds and the universe’s most distant stars and galaxies, crystal clear images are a must. To achieve this, the Unit Telescope 4 Yepun of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile has an adaptive optics facility equipped with four sodium lasers, aimed towards the sky. When the laser beams reach about 90 kilometers into the atmosphere, they excite sodium atoms that start to glow, creating artificial stars in the sky. By monitoring how these artificial stars twinkle, the deformable secondary mirror of the telescope reshapes at milli-second speeds, correcting atmospheric turbulence. But the Milky Way already has several billions of stars, so why would we need some more and how will that help to create clearer images, you might wonder? Adaptive optics requires having a relatively bright reference star close in the sky to the object you want to observe, ...

10 października 2022: This Picture of the Week shows two of Jupiter’s moons, the icy Ganymede and Europa, which have been imaged in the infrared using the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Whilst Europa is quite similar in size to our own Moon, Ganymede is the largest moon in the whole Solar System – it’s even bigger than the planet Mercury! Their orbits around Jupiter are slightly elliptical, so they get closer and further away from the planet as they orbit it. This results in the moons being stretched and squeezed by the gravitational pull from Jupiter at periodical intervals. This creates frictional heat, warming the insides of the moons, which has made them geologically active. Europa in particular is likely to have active plumes and geysers erupting from the oceans of liquid water beneath the thick ice cover that makes up the surface. Estimates on the abundances of chemical species ...

3 października 2022: Do you see that small red spot? That’s an extremely distant explosion in the early universe imaged by the X-Shooter instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). This light is from a gamma-ray burst (GRB), one of the most luminous and puzzling phenomena in the universe. In September 2021, NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected a bright source of gamma rays in this area of the sky. Once the initial bright flash of a GRB has died down, the afterglow shines at longer wavelengths like visible or infrared light. But they fade very quickly, so astronomers must react fast! A team of astronomers led by Andrea Rossi at INAF in Bologna observed the aftermath of the GRB with a number of telescopes around the world, including several ESO instruments on the VLT and the robotic telescopes REM and GROND hosted at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. Besides taking images with X-Shooter, ...

26 września 2022: The arrow in this Picture of the Week marks the asteroid Didymos as seen on the night of September 25/26 with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Didymos has a smaller 160-metre-long moon called Dimorphos (not seen here), and on 26 September at 23:14 UTC a NASA probe is set to crash into this moon as part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). Our VLT, like many other telescopes around the world, will be watching. The purpose of the mission is to see if a future potentially dangerous asteroid could be deflected from its trajectory using this method. The material following the crash will also hopefully provide us with more information about the composition of asteroids – the original building blocks of our planet. At ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, all four 8.2-metre telescopes of the VLT will observe the aftermath of the impact with different instruments. The ...

19 września 2022: Is this tangle of cords and hoses a machine from the movie The Matrix? You can stay calm: even though the sign says “danger”, what may look like a threatening machine is actually the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal Observatory. MUSE is one of the largest instruments at the VLT and is connected to one of its four 8.2 m telescopes, Yepun. The power of MUSE is that it can take thousands of images at many different colours in one go or, in other words, to take lots of spectra within a large portion of the sky at once. This means that astronomers can observe a galaxy and get the spectral information about all regions of that galaxy. From the spectra, astronomers can determine, for instance, the chemical composition of the galaxy, key in understanding how elements such as the ones ...

12 września 2022: The dark clouds in this image, taken from ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, almost resemble something supernatural, like the wispy trails of ghosts in the sky. But there is no need to call the ghostbusters! These clouds, known as Barnard 92 (right) and Barnard 93 (left) are dark nebulae: they look pitch black because the dense gas and dust they contain block out the background light, creating these hazy ghostlike features. These nebulae are stellar nurseries, where new stars are born out of the collapsing dense gas and dust. This whole region of space imaged here is actually part of a much larger stellar complex, called the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (or Messier 24, catalogued by Charles Messier in 1764). This area is so rich in stars that it is clearly visible to the naked eye during dark nights, in the constellation of Sagittarius. This image was taken with an ...

5 września 2022: The sunset seen in this Picture of the Week creates a magnificent setting over the telescope village of ESO’s La Silla Observatory in the Chilean desert. La Silla is home to many telescopes, some still in active use, like the ESO 3.6-metre telescope situated at the highest summit to the right and currently on the hunt for exoplanets. Some of La Silla’s telescopes have been retired, like the Swedish-ESO submillimetre Telescope (SEST) that’s seen in the foreground with its shiny 15-metre dish. Built in 1987, SEST was at the time the largest telescope of its kind in the southern hemisphere. Thanks to its wavelength range, it enabled scientists to study the very distant Universe, and to make many exciting discoveries related to stellar nurseries. As time passed, new technology brought forth more advanced telescopes, which also observe in the (sub)millimeter part of the spectrum, such as the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment ...

29 sierpnia 2022: This Picture of the Week shows an infrared view of Sagittarius B1, a region close to the centre of the Milky Way, imaged with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. The centre of our galaxy is an exotic environment, densely populated with stars, and has been suggested to have more star formation than any other place in the Milky Way. But so far we have only found less than 10% of all young stars we expect there. Where are the others? There is a catch: our view towards the centre is obscured by clouds of dust and gas, blocking the light from the stars. With infrared instruments it is possible to peer through these clouds. In this image, taken with the infrared HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s VLT, we get to take a closer look at this region. The view is mesmerising, unveiling a myriad of stars. In a recent ...

22 sierpnia 2022: This picture of the week, taken from ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, shows bright red streaks known as red sprites. These are an elusive form of lightning that occurs well-above storm clouds, discharging electricity high up in Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of 50-90km. In addition to occurring much higher in the sky than regular lightning, they are cooler than the white lightning we usually see and appear much fainter. Red sprites are very difficult to catch: the first photographic evidence for them was only taken in 1989. Seemingly painted across the background of the photograph is a green hue, known as airglow. During the day, sunlight knocks electrons away from nitrogen and oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere and, at night, these electrons recombine with the atoms and molecules, causing them to shine. Usually, airglow can only be seen in very dark skies where there is no light pollution. This ...

15 sierpnia 2022: Cerro Armazones, in Chile's Atacama Desert, is the site of ESO’s upcoming giant, the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). In this image, we see the road leading up to this 3000m-high mountain, and in the distance, ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The lasers of the VLT reach towards the sky, parallel to the Milky Way. Cerro Armazones was actually the first suggested site for the VLT, and now the mountain will finally get a telescope of its own. Working at high altitude is not easy, but Cerro Armazones is both dry and has almost no artificial light pollution, making it a perfect site with excellent conditions for the world’s biggest eye on the sky. In this picture we see a red shimmer illuminating the dark sky, a natural phenomenon called airglow. With an anticipated first light later this decade, and equipped with a range of scientific instruments, the ELT will be ...