Veckans bild

28 juli 2014: Close to ESO's ALMA Observatory, a tour bus creates a cloud of dust as it makes its way across the Chilean desert. This bus carries staff heading to the ALMA Operations Support Facility for the start of an 8-day shift. In the background we see two volcanoes, their snow-covered peaks obscured by clouds. Located on the border between Bolivia and Chile, these two inactive volcanoes, despite being just a short distance from each other, were created in different geological epochs — Licancabur, the volcano on the left, is much younger than its smaller neighbour Juriques. Licancabur is famous for its near-symmetrical shape, and for being home to one of the highest lakes in the world. At an altitude of 5916 metres, the lake in Licancabur’s caldera is host to a variety of rare flora and fauna, and has been studied to see how life is coping in this extreme environment. ...

21 juli 2014: This panoramic view of ESO’s flagship facility in northern Chile was taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Gabriel Brammer. The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is seen setting to work at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, visible against a backdrop of clear skies with the Milky Way overhead. To create this picture, Brammer combined several long-exposure shots in order to capture the faint light of the Milky Way as it circled above the massive enclosures of the VLT’s Unit Telescopes. Each of these giants is 25 metres tall, and they are named after prominent features of the sky in the language of the local Mapuche tribe: the Sun, the Moon, the constellation of the Southern Cross, and Venus — Antu, Kueyen, Melipal, and Yepun respectively. On the left of the frame, the smaller Auxiliary Telescopes can be seen in their white round, domes, with the large and small Magellanic Clouds above them. The combination ...

14 juli 2014: Can you count the number of bright dots in this picture? This crowded frame is a deep-field image obtained using the Wide Field Imager (WFI), a camera mounted on a relatively modestly sized telescope, the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre located at the La Silla Observatory, Chile. This image is one of five patches of sky covered by the COMBO-17 survey (Classifying Objects by Medium-Band Observations in 17 filters), a deep search for cosmic objects in a relatively narrow area of the southern hemisphere's sky. Each one of the five patches is recorded using 17 individual colour filters. Each one of the five COMBO-17 images covers an area of the sky the size of the full Moon. The survey has already revealed thousands of previously unknown cosmic specimens — over 25 000 galaxies, tens of thousands of distant stars and quasars previously hidden from our view, showing just how much we still have ...

7 juli 2014: This aerial photograph shows the sprawling site of the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Headquarters in Garching bei München, Germany. While ESO operates telescopes scattered across Chile in the southern hemisphere, Garching houses the scientific, technical and administrative centre of ESO, where development programmes are carried out to provide the observatories with the most advanced instruments. The buildings in the centre of the frame, both with sleek, curved designs, are the two main ESO Headquarters buildings — the top-right building was the organisation’s sole base for many years before it was recently joined by the lower red-roofed extension, which was inaugurated in December 2013. The black, rounded building is the technical building, where work on new instruments is carried out. Each of the individual Headquarters buildings are connected by curved bridges, seen here as the three-armed black shape in the centre of the frame. The new extension, designed by architects Auer+Weber, ...

30 juni 2014: The Sun sets over Paranal Observatory, painting an array of subtle hues across the sky reminiscent of a Monet landscape. The sparse clouds glow warmly under the Sun's last rays, and the crisp clarity of the air is almost palpable — highlighting why ESO has selected this area of Chile for its observatory. Crepuscular rays — and shadows from the clouds — are streaming from the Sun and appear to converge at the antisolar point. Two of the four domed Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) can be seen on the left, waiting patiently for darkness to fall before conducting their survey of the cosmos. Once the Sun has set, the 1.8-metre diameter ATs will feed starlight to the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), combining the light to produce clear images of the Universe. The mobile ATs are mounted on rails, and can be moved around the ...

23 juni 2014: This new image, taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Gianluca Lombardi, shows a stunning array of colours, ranging from the haze of pink dominating the bottom of the frame to the blues and whites of the Milky Way above. The blocks visible at the foreground of the image are the Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), based at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile. Cutting through the scene is a harsh yellow slash. This prominent streak is the VLT's laser guide star, which is part of the telescope's adaptive optics system that compensates for the blurring effects of the atmosphere. Light from the sky is distorted as it travels through the atmosphere due to local variations. Whenever possible, astronomers hunt down a bright star to calibrate their observations, but when there is no suitable star near enough to their target, they have to rely on an artificial one — created ...

16 juni 2014: På denna nya bild syns hur det går med bygget av vägen, plattformen och servicediket på bergtoppen Cerro Armazones – platsen för framtidens E-ELT (European Extremely Large Telescope). Nedan till vänster syns baslägret, och den nya vägen går i en båge längst ner på berget. Bygget inför E-ELT startades mars 2014 av det chilenska företaget ICAFAL Ingeniería y Construcción S.A. då de började bygga en väg mot bergets topp. Vägbygget vätas ta 16 månader att göra klart. Vägen, som gör bergstoppen tillgängligt för bygget av det jättelika teleskopet, kommer att vara 11 meter bred med ett 7-meter brett asfalterat körfält. Det var Sebastián Rivera Aguila, som arbetar vid byggfirman, som fångade bilden torsdagen den 12 juni 2014 från ett kommersiellt flygplan. – Att jobba i öknen är ett riktigt tufft arbete, men jag är riktigt stolt och mycket glad att kunna vara en del av det här mycket viktiga projektet. ...

9 juni 2014: This image shows the beginning of sunrise over the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile. In this photo, one of the VLT's Unit Telescopes is visible to the bottom right, illuminated by moonlight. Further in the distance there are two Auxiliary Telescopes pointing upwards. The VLT is formed of four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (UTs), and four movable 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs). The telescopes can work together to form a giant interferometer: the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). The light collected by each of these telescopes is combined by the VLTI using a complex system of mirrors in underground tunnels, allowing astronomers to see details up to 16 times finer than with the individual UTs alone. The image was taken by Nicolas Blind, an astronomer who visited Paranal Observatory for a few days in December 2012. Blind may only have been at the observatory for a short ...

2 juni 2014: Framed by the glow of the Moon setting, the fourth Unit Telescope (UT4) of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal Observatory is enveloped by the sky it studies night after night. Located high on Cerro Paranal, the majestic machine sits gracefully at an altitude of 2635 metres above sea level. Paranal is the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and ESO’s flagship facility, containing a suite of telescopes. UT4, otherwise known as Yepun (Venus), is one of the four Unit Telescopes that comprise the VLT, also working with their four Auxiliary Telescope companions to form the super-sensitive Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). Housed within a thermally controlled building, UT4 uses its incredibly precise 8.2-metre mirror to scan the stars and unravel the mysteries of the Universe. The other three Unit Telescopes are known as Antu (Sun), Kueyen (Moon), and Melipal (Southern Cross), from the language of the Mapuche people ...

26 maj 2014: The sky over Paranal Observatory in northern Chile is a real treat for ESO's Photo Ambassadors, who are constantly experimenting with new techniques to obtain even more striking views of the unique, arid landscape and state-of-the-art facilities. On this occasion, Gianluca Lombardi has combined many long-exposure images to get this stunning result — the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its Auxiliary Telescopes, their motion appearing as blurred flickers beneath a stream of stars, while the apparent motion of the stars across the sky has left smeared trails that are captured on camera as the Earth rotates. The VLT is ESO's flagship facility. It is of the most productive telescopes in the world, and the most advanced optical instrument ever made.

19 maj 2014: A small crowd gathers by the telescopes to see the night in at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. For most, sunset marks the end of a working day — a time for rest. But not here; nighttime is when the real work is done, with a clear night’s sky as the workplace. The crowd looks tiny, dwarfed by the telescopes to their left. These domes house the four 1.8-metre-diameter Auxiliary Telescopes that are part of the Very Large Telescope array (VLT). But the real giant of the picture is at the far left; if the Auxiliary Telescopes make the crowd look small, then the VLT Unit Telescope makes them look like ants. The VLT has four 8.2-metre telescopes like this, some of the largest telescopes on the planet. But if you think that’s big, wait for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), set for first light in the early 2020s. ...

12 maj 2014: This gorgeous photograph, taken in the Atacama Desert in Chile, shows star trails circling the South Celestial Pole, over a cacti-dominated still landscape. The star trails show the apparent path of the stars in the sky as the Earth slowly rotates, and are captured by taking long-exposure shots. A final deeper exposure was superimposed over the magnificent trails, revealing many more, fainter stars and, just rising above the horizon, the southern Milky Way, with its patches of dark dust and the well-known pinkish glow of the Carina Nebula. Towards the right, the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, the Large (top-centre) and Small (bottom-right) Magellanic Clouds, can also be seen.

5 maj 2014: The Sun sets over La Silla, one of ESO's observing sites in Chile, creating a fiery orange glow along the horizon. This image, taken by David Jones, shows the alignment of three planets over the summit of ESO's telescopes in June 2013. Here the trio visible to the left of centre is composed of Jupiter (bottom left, almost invisible in orange sunset), Venus (centre), and Mercury (top right) — see labelled image. Alignments like this happen only once every several years, so it is a real treat for photographers and astronomers. When three (or more) celestial objects align like this in the sky, it is called a "syzygy". Check this syzygy image, showing almost the same scene (also from May 2013). "This image was taken during a five-night observing run with the 3.6-metre New Technology Telescope on La Silla, so I was very fortunate to be awarded observing time at ...

28 april 2014: This image shows an ancient sun-scorched boulder near ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, on the outskirts of this desert at a height of some 2400 metres above sea level. Visible on the boulder are several petroglyphs — rock engravings — depicting men and llamas. Llamas have historically been very important to South American cultures, being used as both a source of food and wool, and also as a pack animal for carrying goods across the land. The importance of llamas was reflected in the beliefs of the pre-Columbian people who inhabited the region — the Inca herders worshipped a multicoloured llama deity by the name of Urcuchillay, who was said to watch over the animals. The name Urcuchillay was also given to the constellation of Lyra (The Lyre) by the ancient Inca astronomers. The llama is honoured yet again in the Inca constellations. These constellations were formed from dark ...

21 april 2014: Many hands make light work, as the old saying goes, although perhaps in this case the phrase "many wheels make light work" is more appropriate. Pictured here is Otto, one of the two ALMA Transporters along with its companion Lore. Otto and Lore were responsible for carrying the ALMA antennas up to the Chajnantor Plateau, a site some 5000 metres above sea level in northern Chile. After placing the antennas, the two trucks have the additional task of repositioning them according to the scientists' requirements. Otto can be seen in action in this video. These two powerful beasts are the ultimate in custom vehicles. They were designed specifically for ESO by the German vehicle manufacturer Scheuerle Fahrzeugfabrik, who have an impressive history of transporting heavy loads like the Antares rocket and an oil platform weighing in at a staggering 15 000 tonnes! The transporters are identical except for the colour ...

14 april 2014: A curtain of stars surrounds the 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) in this new Ultra High Definition photograph from the ESO Ultra HD Expedition [1]. It was captured on the first night of shooting at ESO's La Silla Observatory, which sits at 2400 metres above sea level on the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert. The majestic telescope enclosure aligns perfectly with the Milky Way’s central region — the brightest section and the area which obscures the galactic centre. The distinctive octagonal enclosure that houses the NTT stands tall in this image — silhouetted against the glittering cosmos above and almost appearing to consume the Milky Way. This telescope housing was considered a technological breakthrough when completed in 1989. Visible to the left of the Milky Way is the bright orange star Antares at the heart of Scorpius (The Scorpion). Saturn can be seen as the brightest point to the ...

7 april 2014: Denna bild, som är tagen under en timelapse-serie av bilder på ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) är ännu ett dramatiskt fotografi från ESO:s Ultra HD Expedition. ALMA, som ligger 5000 meter över havet på den öde bergsplatån Chajnantor i de chilenska Anderna, är det andra målet för ESO:s fyra fotoambassadörer [1] på deras 17-dagars resa. Amabassadörerna har försetts med toppmodern ultra-HD-utrustning för att bäst fånga just sådana här mäktiga bilder [2] [3]. I bilden syns några av de 66 högprecisionsantenner som utgör ALMA, paraboler riktade mot skyn. Härifrån studerar de den interstellära rymdens kalla moln och tittar långt in i det förflutna, mot våra kosmiska ursprung. Det spektakulära, intensiva och färgsprakande spjutet av ljus som skär genom himlen över ALMA-antennerna är ett stjärnfall. En meteor blixtrar i nyanser av smaragdgrönt, gult och karmosinrött medan den intar jordens atmosfär och färdas snabbt och eldigt tvärsöver himlen. Det snabba eldklotet är i ...

31 mars 2014: This photo, taken at ESO's Paranal Observatory, is the first photograph from the ESO Ultra HD Expedition — a pioneering journey currently being undertaken by four world-renowned videographers and ESO Photo Ambassadors [1]. Equipped with state-of-the-art Ultra HD tools [2][3], the team are capturing ESO’s three unique observing sites in Chile in all their grandeur, while documenting their journey and escapades in a blog. The four Unit Telescopes — Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun — one of the Auxiliary Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), are captured from an unusual perspective in this image. Taken using a fisheye lens, this photography technique produces a 360° view of the location — creating an immersive Paranal world with the swirling Milky Way at the centre of it. Distant cosmic gems are seen scattered above the VLT — speckling the sapphire shades of the night sky. ...

24 mars 2014: ESO's observatories are privileged spots where astrophotographers can catch amazing views of the cosmos. But that's not all — sometimes, they are ideal locations from which to capture otherworldly images of our own planet, too. In this shot, ESO photo ambassador Gabriel Brammer has used a fish-eye lens to create this spectacular round effect. The clear sky over Paranal looks like a glass ball full of stars, with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) platform framing the picture. In the bottom left the four VLT Unit Telescopes, each some 25 metres tall, are observing the night sky, one of them pointing its laser up into the night. Scattered around the top left of the frame, the round domes of the VLT Auxiliary Telescopes are easily spotted under the bright Milky Way. The two blurry smudges just above the laser are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two of the closest galaxies ...

17 mars 2014: Ännu en stjärnklar natt vid ESO:s Paranalobservatorium i Chile och ännu ett tillfälle att luta sig tillbaka och ta in åsynen av vår galax, Vintergatan. Många av oss som bor i trånga, ljusförorenade städer får inte längre se den i sådan här detalj. Den fantastiska synen vet vi nu är vår hemgalax. I Norden trodde man att det ljusa bandet på vinterhimlen var markerade bron till Valhall och det fick namnet Vintergatan. Även i antika Grekland tänkte man att detta var gudarnas verk. I deras legender var det disiga bandet bröstmjölken från Hera, fru till Zeus, och det är också de gamla grekerna som vi har att tacka för namnet Milky Way, som det heter på engelska. Roten till det namnet är det hellenistiska uttrycket Γαλαξίας κύκλος, som uttalas galaxias kyklos, mjölkig cirkel, och ger det moderna namnet på engelska och flera andra språk. Den här bilden togs av ESO:s ...