Fotografia da Semana

17 de Julho de 2008: The first successful movement of an ALMA antenna took place at the Operations Support Facility (OSF) on 8 July 2008. The antenna transporter "Lore", one of the two units manufactured by Scheuerle under contract by ESO and delivered recently at the OSF, has been used to move one 12-m antenna from their site erection facility to an external antenna pad for sky testing.

7 de Julho de 2008: Enquanto o ALMA está a ser construído, os astrónomos fazem já astronomia milimétrica e submilimétrica no Chajnantor com o auxílio do Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX). Trata-se de um telescópio de alta tecnologia de 12 metros, baseado numa antena protótipo do ALMA, que opera no local do ALMA. O telescópio, que dispõe de óptica modificada e de uma superfície de antena melhorada, foi concebido para tirar partido da excelente transparência do céu e opera na região de comprimentos de onda compreendida entre 0,2 e 1,4 mm.

1 de Julho de 2008: The image shows X-shooter, the first of the second generation VLT instruments, under test in the integration lab at ESO, Garching. The instrument has been built by a Consortium including ESO and institutes from Denmark, Italy, The Netherlands and France, and will start operation at the telescope in 2009. X-shooter is a single target, wide band, intermediate spectral resolution spectrograph, designed to get the full spectrum of the faintest cosmic sources from the atmospheric cutoff in the near-ultraviolet to the infrared K-band in a single exposure. In this image the instrument is shown as mounted on a telescope Cassegrain focus simulator, pointing at a large zenith distance. At the centre is the cryostat with the near-infrared arm of the spectrograph and at the left is the lower side of the visual spectrograph with its CCD detector. The two large boxes on the sides host the control electronics of the instrument.

23 de Junho de 2008: The winding road connecting the ALMA Operation Support Facility at 3,000m altitude to the Array Operation Site (5,000m high) passes an area between 3500m and 3800m dominated by large cacti (Echinopsis Atacamensis). These cacti grow on average 1cm per year, and reach heights of up to 9m. Stephane Guisard recently captured the beautiful sky above this unique location in the Chilean Atacama Desert. The Milky Way is seen in all its glory, as well as, in the lower right, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

10 de Junho de 2008: This aerial view of Cerro Paranal, the site of ESO's Very Large Telescope, was obtained in 1994. It shows the construction of the concrete base for the four telescope enclosures. To the left and a little lower than the rest of the platform is the excavation for the control building. The platform altitude is about 2640 metres above sea level and it measures about 150 metres across. The width of the access road is no less than 12 metres, i.e. nearly equal to that of a three-lane highway; this is necessary to ensure the safe transport of all telescope parts, especially the four 8.2-metre fragile mirrors, to the top. The summit of Paranal has been blasted away so to create the flat platform that supports the 4 Unit Telescopes, as well as the network of tunnels that transport the light from the telescopes to the interferometric laboratory. On this 1994 ...

26 de Maio de 2008: O céu em rotação por cima do Very Large Telescope do ESO no Paranal. Esta exposição longa mostra as estrelas a rodar em torno do polo sul celeste (à esquerda) e do polo norte celeste (à direita), estando o equador celeste no centro da imagem - onde as estrelas parecem mover-se em linha reta. Os movimentos das cúpulas do VLT também são visíveis.

13 de Maio de 2008: Heavyweights at 4,000 metre altitude: this photo shows the two ALMA antenna transporters during the final phase of the acceptance testing in April on the road between the ALMA OSF at 2,900 metre altitude and the AOS at 5,000 metres. The first transporter ("Otto") is travelling unloaded, while the second one ("Lore") is carrying the 115-tonne antenna dummy.

4 de Maio de 2008: An image of the planet Uranus (located 20 Astronomical units from Earth) obtained at the Very Large Telescope Observatory using the Adaptive Optics system NAOS and the near-infrared imager CONICA to capture high-contrast images of the giant planet and its system of satellites and rings during its 2008 equinox. Every 42 years, the ring (and satellites) plane of Uranus crosses the Sun, providing us with a unique opportunity to observe the rings while they present their edge to us. Ring plane crossing also allow us to observe the rings form their dark side (i.e. while the Sun is illuminating them from the opposite side), so one can search for faint satellites, faint rings, or faint ring structures, which could not be seen otherwise. Ring Plane Crossings are also an excellent opportunity to observe mutual events between satellites such as eclipse or occultation phenomena. The image above corresponds to a one ...

20 de Março de 2008: The 8.2-m primary mirror of Yepun, Unit Telescope 4 of ESO's Very Large Telescope, after its recoating in early March

11 de Março de 2008: The central region of the Orion Nebula (M42, NGC 1976) as seen in the near-infrared by the High Acuity Wide field K-band Imager (HAWK-I) instrument at ESO's Very Large Telescope at Paranal.

25 de Fevereiro de 2008: Arrival of the ALMA Antenna Transporters at the Operations Support Facility (OSF) in Chile as the convoy passed through the Valle de Luna.

11 de Fevereiro de 2008: Taking advantage of the presence of light echoes, a team of astronomers have used an ESO telescope to measure, at the 1% precision level, the distance of a Cepheid — a class of variable stars that constitutes one of the first steps in the cosmic distance ladder. The determination of the distance to RS Pup, following the method of the American astronomer Robert Havlen, is based on the measurement of the phase difference between the variation of the star and the variation of isolated nebular features. Because the luminosity of the star changes in a very distinctive pattern, the presence of the nebula allows the astronomers to see light echoes and use them to measure the distance of the star. The light that travelled from the star to a dust grain and then to the telescope arrives a bit later than the light that comes directly from the star to ...

29 de Janeiro de 2008: Artist's impression of the disc of matter surrounding the young stellar object MWC 147 as inferred from observations made with ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer. Thanks to these observations, astronomers have probed the inner parts of the disc of material surrounding the MWC 147, witnessing how it gains its mass before becoming an adult. A slice has been cut to show the inner structure better. The disc extends out to 100 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun (100 Astronomical Units — 100 AU). It is inclined by about 50 degrees as seen from Earth. The dust in the outer disc emits mainly at mid-infrared wavelengths, while close to the star there is also strong near-infrared emission from very hot gas. This gas is transported towards the forming star, increasing its mass at a rate of 7 millionths of the mass of the Sun — or about 2 ...

21 de Janeiro de 2008: Colour-composite image of the triplet of galaxies, catalogued as NGC 7173 (top), 7174 (bottom right) and 7176 (bottom left), and located 106 million light-years away towards the constellation of Piscis Austrinus (the 'Southern Fish'). This triplet of galaxies makes up part of the Hickson Compact Group HCG 90. NGC 7173 and 7176 are elliptical galaxies, while NGC 7174 is a spiral galaxy with quite disturbed dust lanes and a long, twisted tail. This seems to indicate that the two lower galaxies - whose combined shape bears some resemblance to that of a sleeping baby - are currently interacting. Astronomers have suggested that the three galaxies will finally merge. The size of the image is about 5.3 arcminutes. The image is based on data obtained with the VLT FORS1 instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope through three different filters, B, V, and R. The data were extracted from the ESO Science ...

14 de Janeiro de 2008: Robert's Quartet is a family of four very different galaxies, located at a distance of about 160 million light-years, close to the centre of the southern constellation of the Phoenix. Its members are NGC 87, NGC 88, NGC 89 and NGC 92, discovered by John Herschel in the 1830s. NGC 87 (upper right) is an irregular galaxy similar to the satellites of our Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds. NGC 88 (centre) is a spiral galaxy with an external diffuse envelope, most probably composed of gas. NGC 89 (lower middle) is another spiral galaxy with two large spiral arms. The largest member of the system, NGC 92 (left), is a spiral Sa galaxy with an unusual appearance. One of its arms, about 100,000 light-years long, has been distorted by interactions and contains a large quantity of dust.

7 de Janeiro de 2008: Estas formações bizarras de gelo e neve chamadas “penitentes” formam-se em regiões de elevada altitude como por exemplo, a planície do Chajnantor, próximo de onde se situará a rede ALMA. São lâminas de gelo produzidas pela concorrência entre a sublimação e o derretimento da neve. No Chajnantor no solstício de verão o Sol encontra-se perto do zénite ao meio dia e por isso os penitentes formam-se verticalmente. Esta fotografia foi tirada em dezembro de 2005. Esta imagem está disponível de forma emoldurada na loja do ESO.

24 de Dezembro de 2007: Utilizando o Very Large Telescope do ESO, uma equipa internacional de astrónomos descobriu um caso raro de fusão tripla de galáxias. Este sistema, a que os astrónomos chamaram “O Pássaro” - embora na realidade se pareça com uma fada Sininho cósmica - é composto por dois galáxias em espiral de elevada massa e por uma terceira galáxia irregular.Nesta imagem combinou-se uma exposição de 30 minutos na banda K do instrumento NACO, montado no VLT, com imagens de arquivo nas bandas B e I, obtidas pelo instrumento ACS montado no HST, produzindo-se assim uma imagem a três cores do sistema de galáxias em interação do “Pássaro”. A imagem NACO permitiu aos astrónomos ver, não apenas as duas galáxias maiores previamente conhecidas, mas também identificar uma terceira componente claramente separada, uma galáxia irregular com massa relativamente elevada e que parece estar a formar estrelas a uma taxa bastante elevada.

17 de Dezembro de 2007: On 3 and 4 December 2007, the two ALMA antenna transporters, Otto and Lore, were being loaded onto a barge on the Neckar at Heilbronn harbour (Germany) to start their long journey to Chile. From there, they will travel to Antwerpen (Belgium) and then put onto a ship towards the port of Mejillones, in the north of Chile, to finally reach the ALMA base, close to San Pedro de Atacama. The ALMA antenna transporters are each 20 metre long, 10 metre wide and 6 metre high, and weigh 130 tonnes. They will be able to transport a 115-tonne antenna and set it down on a concrete pad within millimetres of a prescribed position. Image taken in December 2007.

10 de Dezembro de 2007: The first three Japanese ALMA antennas of the Atacama Compact Array (ACA) at the ALMA Operation Support Facility, located close to the town of San Pedro de Atacama in the Chilean Atacama Desert, at an altitude of 2900m. At the time of the picture, in November 2007, the antennas were undergoing final tests before being handed over to the ALMA Observatory. The 12-m antennas were built by MELCO for the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, one of the partners in the ALMA partnership.

1 de Dezembro de 2007: On 17 and 18 November 2007, the Regional Minister for Research of the Belgian French-speaking Community, Marie-Dominique Simonet, visited Paranal. This was part of a week-long visit to Brazil and Chile, in which the Minister promoted the 'Competitivity Poles' as well as Research and Education in this part of the world. The Minister was accompanied by a delegation comprising Claude Gonfroy and Jean-Luc Horward, members of her Cabinet, Jean-Pierre Swings, former member of the ESO Council, Claude Jamar from the Centre Spatial de Liėge, and Bill Collins, from the AMOS company which built the four Auxiliary Telescopes. Ten French-speaking Belgian journalists, including two TV crews, also joined the Minister for a day at Paranal. Felix Mirabel, ESO's Representative in Chile, Olivier Hainaut, Head of Science Operations at Paranal, and Ueli Weilenmann, were the hosts of the Minister. The Minister visited the telescopes and facilities on site and showed a clear ...