Photo de la semaine

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potw2413 — Photo de la semaine
A futuristic transporter
25 mars 2024: This image looks straight out of a science fiction film on an alien planet, but it’s very real and happening here on Earth. The landscape is the Chajnantor plateau, about 5000 metres high in the Chilean Andes. The antennas are part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a telescope ESO operates together with international partners. But why is one of them mounted on a gigantic truck? ALMA comprises 66 high-precision antennas: a main array of 50 antennas, each 12 metres wide, and an additional compact array of four 12-metre and twelve 7-metre antennas. The ALMA antennas act together as a single telescope: antennas close to each other have higher sensitivity to detect extended sources, while those further away can see very fine details. The antennas of the main array can be arranged in different configurations on 192 pads across the entire site, where the maximum distance between them can ...
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potw2412 — Photo de la semaine
A silent watcher
18 mars 2024: This Picture of the Week shows the stunning night sky over the Swedish–ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. Until its retirement in 2003, SEST used its 15-metre main dish to observe the cold gas clouds where stars form. Now the telescope, perching at 2375 metres altitude, watches silently over the landscape of the Atacama Desert. While SEST stands in one of the darkest places on the planet, the sky itself isn’t completely black — rather the opposite! Here, besides thousands of stars, the picture features shades of red and green across the sky — an atmospheric phenomenon called airglow. In the bottom-left part of the sky we can see a portion of the band of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, and in the top half, two cloud-like structures that look like galactic fireworks. These are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf ...
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potw2411 — Photo de la semaine
Dark and towering
11 mars 2024: Astronomers are well-known for naming objects with odd conventions, and the cometary globule GN 16.43.7.01 seen in this Picture of the Week is no exception. Cometary globules have nothing to do with comets aside from appearance: they are named for their dusty head and elongated, dark tail, as seen in this image taken with the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. This globule, dubbed the Dark Tower — astronomers compensate with obvious names — lies about 5000 light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation Scorpius (the Scorpion). It contains dense clumps of collapsing gas and dust out of which stars will be born. The curious shape of this object is carved out from an intense bombardment of radiation from a cluster of young, bright stars located off-camera to the upper-left. This radiation has swept around and outlined the cometary globule with the characteristic pink ...
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potw2410 — Photo de la semaine
Dance of the cranes
4 mars 2024: A watched pot never boils, but luckily that doesn’t apply to us watching ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) being constructed. This Picture of the Week shows a timelapse overlooking Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama Desert over the course of 2023, as the dome of the ELT is pieced together in smooth choreography. Partly built at a nearby base camp, large steel elements arrive at the peak ready to be neatly assembled together into the dome. The steel structure provides the skeleton around which a protective insulated cladding is now being applied. It rests on a concrete foundation separated from the central pier where the telescope will be, to reduce vibrations propagating through the ground. The dome can rotate on 36 trolleys, allowing the telescope to observe the whole sky. A new webcam inside the dome shows progress in the azimuth structure that will support the telescope, as well as ...
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potw2409 — Photo de la semaine
A slice of moon cheese, anyone?
26 février 2024: Appearing to cut through the Moon in this Picture of the Week is one of the laser guide stars on Unit Telescope 4 (UT4 or Yepun), one of the four 8.2-m telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). At any altitude, ground-based telescopes are affected by the atmospheric distortion of astronomical light. To counteract this, astronomers use adaptive optics in which a flexible mirror is deformed in real time to counteract this effect, yielding sharp images. The laser you see here, a powerful beam of light, excites sodium atoms 90 kilometres high in the atmosphere, consequently producing a glowing artificial star. Astronomers use this star to measure the blurring effect of the atmosphere and drive the deformable mirrors. To avoid disturbing airplanes, these lasers rely on an automated aircraft avoidance system. This system continuously monitors the sky and instantly switches the lasers off whenever an aircraft’s trajectory is predicted to ...
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potw2408 — Photo de la semaine
The next step in gravitational wave studies
19 février 2024: A small step is being taken up the stairs to one of the BlackGEM telescopes in this Picture of the Week, but this facility represents a giant leap in gravitational wave studies at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. BlackGEM — which was developed by Radboud University, the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy, and the KU Leuven and officially inaugurated in January 2024 — is a mostly robotic array of optical telescopes designed to scan the southern sky. Each telescope in the array is aimed at different parts of the clear sky above La Silla, ever ready to detect the visible light afterglow of gravitational wave sources — cataclysmic events such as merging neutron stars or black holes. BlackGEM will pinpoint where these sources are and provide astronomers with a target for follow-up observations with other, larger telescopes to learn more about them. From the southern hemisphere, astronomers also have ...
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potw2407 — Photo de la semaine
Hiding in the crowd
12 février 2024: Hundreds of thousands of stars are contained in this Picture of the Week, an infrared image of Sagittarius C, a region near the centre of the Milky Way. Taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Chilean Atacama Desert, this image is helping astronomers unlock a stellar puzzle. The centre of the Milky Way is the most prolific star-forming region in the entire galaxy. However, astronomers have only found a fraction of the young stars they expected here: there is “fossil” evidence that many more stars were born in the recent past than the ones we actually see. This is because looking towards the centre of the galaxy is not an easy task: clouds of dust and gas block the light from the stars and obscure the view. Infrared instruments, such as the HAWK-I camera on the VLT, allow astronomers to peer through these clouds and reveal the starry ...
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potw2406 — Photo de la semaine
Teamwork makes an astronomer’s dream work
5 février 2024: Why use just one telescope to observe the sky? The plateau of Cerro Paranal, seen under the moonlight in this Picture of the Week, hosts ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), an indomitable team of four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (UTs) and four additional 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs). An interferometer precisely combines light from separate telescopes observing the same object in the sky, allowing astronomers to see the cosmos in incredible detail. The VLTI uses either a combination of the ATs or the UTs. The ATs, one of which is seen front and centre, are set on tracks so they can be moved to 30 predefined positions on the platform, in different configurations; each arrangement allows astronomers to observe different levels of detail. While the ATs are specifically designed for the VLTI, each UT can be also used as an independent telescope. One of the UTs is equipped with lasers that ...
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potw2405 — Photo de la semaine
And yet it moves
29 janvier 2024: Like a flower following the Sun, the dome of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will be able to rotate to allow the telescope to track objects in the sky. Seen under the bright blue skies of Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama Desert, this video shows a test of the dome rotating for the first time. The test moved the dome 10 m in either direction at 1 cm/s, but the final operating speed will be a walking pace of 5 km/h. The test was performed by engineers of Cimolai, the company contracted by ESO to design and build the ELT dome and telescope structure. The humans hard at work in this sped-up video show, for scale, the sheer size of the telescope dome. Rotating the dome is no small feat, as its skeleton currently weighs about 2500 tons, and will eventually weigh around 6100 tons when finished. This first ...
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potw2404 — Photo de la semaine
The moment of truth
22 janvier 2024: In December 2023, the first 18 segments of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) main mirror embarked on a whirlwind 10 000 km journey from Europe to the Chilean Atacama Desert. This Picture of the Week captures the moment of truth when ESO engineers at the ELT Technical Facility unveiled one of the segments to ensure it had arrived safely at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. Due to the sheer size and fragility of the mirror segments —each mirror is five centimetres thick, 1.5 metres wide and shaped to nanometre accuracy— they were each shipped in a private, protective cocoon. Each box was equipped with humidity, temperature and shock sensors to track the internal conditions during the long journey. When loaded into the transport vehicles, the boxes were cushioned by air bags. Upon arrival at the technical facility, the segments were carefully inspected to ensure they hadn’t been damaged during delivery. With the ...
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potw2403 — Photo de la semaine
A giant ghostly bird
15 janvier 2024: The Vela constellation is visible with the naked eye in the southern sky, but you might miss a lot of details hidden there, like those shown in this Picture of the Week. This is a small patch of the Vela supernova remnant, the intricate leftovers of the explosion of a massive star 11 000 years ago. This image is part of a huge and detailed mosaic captured with the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Chilean desert. Pink and orange filamentary clouds swarm around in this picture, resembling the ghostly shadow of a cosmic bird with wide orange wings, a long pink body, and a bright pinkish star as an eye. A myriad of stars are sprinkled all over the image. When massive stars reach the end of their life they explode as supernovae, expelling their outer layers. These explosions send out shock waves that ...
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potw2402 — Photo de la semaine
A full moon rises
8 janvier 2024: The high altitude and dry air of the Chajnantor plateau give the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), operated by ESO and its international partners, an optimal window to study the cold dark universe. In this striking Picture of the Week, the rolling, rusty and barren landscape of the plateau feels more like an alien world, rather than our own planet. Thankfully, a familiar friend brings us back to Earth — the full Moon rising at sunset. Over the different lunar phases, the moon rises and sets at different times, while over the course of the year, it rises and sets in different locations on the horizon. Set against the horizon during its rise, the moon often seems to loom larger than usual. But this is only a trick on your eyes due to a famed optical illusion. Our Moon is a unique body within the solar system; it’s Earth’s only ...
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potw2401 — Photo de la semaine
Starting off the year with a bang
1 janvier 2024: Firework displays are used to mark the beginning of the New Year all over the world, so we thought we’d bring you our own, space-themed display to kick things off in 2024. This Picture of the Week is a time-lapse video of the night sky above ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal, Chile. Look closely, and you’ll catch a glimpse of an extraterrestrial firework, otherwise known as a meteor. Meteors are objects from outer space that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere at high speeds. Often called “shooting stars” or “fireballs”, they create dazzling displays as they crash through our gaseous atmosphere, heating up as a result of friction with the air. In this sped-up time-lapse, captured in June last year, the meteor left behind a trail of smoke that slowly dispersed in the atmosphere. By some estimates, 44 tonnes of meteoric material fall into Earth’s atmosphere ...
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potw2352 — Photo de la semaine
Jingle all the way to ESO HQ
25 décembre 2023: Flying through the snow,And zipping through the air,O’er the fields we go,To ESO's home, we dare,Bells on soundtracks ring,Making spirits bright,What fun it is to fly and sing,A festive song tonight. Join us as we jingle all the way to the snow-covered ESO Headquarters in Garching, Germany, through this drone video taken in early December. While it’s fairly quiet around the office today, usually the ESO Headquarters are bustling with scientists, engineers and administrative staff who work in harmony on all aspects of astronomical research, from telescope design and development to archiving and analysing data. The communications department keeps the show on the road too, of course. ESO staff work in specially designed and award-winning buildings, which while sometimes confusing to navigate, contain a wealth of detail. Where the flat circular buildings meet, they surround a circular courtyard that has a diameter of exactly 8.2 metres — the size of ...
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potw2351 — Photo de la semaine
Happy Holidays from ESO (2023)
18 décembre 2023: As we are closing out 2023, we want to send our best wishes for the holidays and the new year to each and every one of you out there, from all of us at ESO. This year marked 60 years of collaboration with the Republic of Chile, 25 years of science with the Very Large Telescope and 10 years of science with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, which recently published its highest-resolution image. Our next project, the Extremely Large Telescope, also reached 50% completion this year. Thanks for following along on our journey to explore the Universe. We wish you a healthy end of the year and a wonderful start to 2024!
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potw2350 — Photo de la semaine
Road to the ELT
11 décembre 2023: Today’s Picture of the Week captures the expansive hilltop of Cerro Armazones in Chile, the home of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). The Martian-esque ground may look flat from up here, but the peak is more than 3000 metres above sea level. Ground-based telescopes work best when the atmosphere between them and the Universe is kept to a minimum, making the ELT’s mountaintop perch perfect for observations. Much like the physical road up the mountain, the metaphorical road to the ELT has been equally long. Indeed, the first detailed studies for the project were given the go-ahead on this day exactly 17 years ago. This study kicked off the design process, although it wasn’t for another four years that Cerro Armazones was selected as the future home for the giant telescope. Many milestones have been surpassed since 11 December 2006, and of course, the design has changed somewhat since the ...
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potw2349 — Photo de la semaine
Chocolate hills in the middle of the desert
4 décembre 2023: A vista of smooth, chocolatey hills fills this Picture of the Week. The emptiness of this aerial photo is broken only by a white round building at its centre: the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla Observatory in the Chilean Atacama desert. Located at an altitude of around 2400 metres above sea level, the telescope started observing the sky in November 1977. This remote area has one of the darkest night skies on the Earth, allowing the telescope to observe the wonders of the night sky undisturbed. In particular, the ESO 3.6-m telescope hosts one of the most successful planet finder instruments: the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), which measures the subtle gravitational tug that planets exert on their host stars as they orbit around them.
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potw2348 — Photo de la semaine
A magical night in the Atacama Desert
27 novembre 2023: There’s magic in this Picture of the Week; can you feel it? The strange geological formations protruding out of the desert floor are twisted and gnarled like old wizards’ hats, while the sky above is filled with thousands of stars and a myriad of mesmerising colours. This is Valle de la Luna — meaning “Valley of the Moon” — in the Chilean Atacama Desert, close to where the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, is located. It’s easy to see where the valley gets its name from; the moon-like formations on the dried-up salt beds have been eroded by aeons of exposure to the elements and feel far more out of this world than of it. Its altitude and dry air, as well as its distance from civilisation, make it a great place for stargazing. This is particularly important for ALMA, as water vapour in ...
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potw2347 — Photo de la semaine
A stellar graveyard in the sky
20 novembre 2023: What’s left over after a massive star reaches the end of its life I hear you ask? Take a look for yourself. This Picture of the Week shows a small but very intricate portion of the Vela supernova remnant, the violent and yet beautiful aftermath of an explosive stellar death. This dramatic scene played out around 11 000 years ago when a massive star in the constellation Vela went supernova. During this violent event, the star would have shined so brightly that it could be seen during the day. The detailed and stunning view of both the gaseous filaments in the remnant and the bright blue stars in the foreground were captured using the 286-million-pixel OmegaCAM at the VLT Survey Telescope, hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. OmegaCAM can take images through several filters that each let the telescope observe the light emitted in a distinct colour. To capture this image, ...
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potw2346 — Photo de la semaine
Guiding lights to the stars
13 novembre 2023: The ESO 3.6-m telescope sits perched at the summit of the La Silla mountain in the Chilean Atacama Desert, 2400 m above sea level, in this Picture of the Week. A part of ESO’s La Silla Observatory, this location provides conditions ideal for stargazing, and is home to the prolific planet-hunter HARPS, the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher. In the dry desert, the skies are clear, and there is rarely a cloud to obstruct the view. Far away from the nearest cities, the skies are dark. The faint green airglow towards the horizon is naturally caused by molecules in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Even the dim, warmly toned lights of the access road, seen at the bottom of the image, are designed to limit the amount of light pollution they produce. At the top we see one of our neighbouring galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud, known as lafken, labken or ...
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