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18. Oktober 2010: The Sun sets at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in this image. Taken at the observatory on Cerro Paranal in the dry Atacama Desert of Chile, the observatory’s four 8.2-metre telescopes can be seen preparing for the night ahead. Three of the VLT’s four Auxiliary 1.8-metre Telescopes (AT), used for interferometry, are also visible. The telescopes are seen reflected in the protection cover of one of the AT stations. The ATs are mounted on tracks and can be moved between precisely defined observing positions from where the beams of collected light are combined in the interferometric laboratory. The ATs are very unusual telescopes, as they are self-contained in their own ultra-compact protective domes, and travel with their own electronics, ventilation, hydraulics and cooling systems. Each AT has a transporter that lifts the telescope and moves it from one position to the other. At 2600 metres above sea level, the observing ...

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New temporary offices at ESO Headquarters

11. Oktober 2010: ESO has grown significantly since 1980, when its European staff originally moved from offices at CERN to a dedicated headquarters building in Garching, near Munich, Germany. In the intervening three decades the number of ESO’s member states has increased from six to fourteen, and the organisation has achieved milestones such as the First Light of the New Technology Telescope at La Silla and of the Very Large Telescope at Paranal, becoming in the process the most productive observatory in the world. Today, ESO is constructing the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array at Chajnantor in collaboration with international partners, and is in the detailed design phase of a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large Telescope, which will be “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”. Over the years, the number of ESO staff working in Garching has increased from about 100 to about 450, as the organisation has grown and tackled these exciting new ...

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ALMA antennas on Chajnantor

4. Oktober 2010: Two of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 12-metre antennas gaze at the sky at the observatory’s Array Operations Site (AOS), high on the Chajnantor plateau at an altitude of 5000 metres in the Chilean Andes. Eight antennas have been installed at the AOS since November 2009. More antennas will be installed on the Chajnantor plateau during the next months and beyond, allowing astronomers to start producing early scientific results with the ALMA system around late 2011. After this, the interferometer will steadily grow to reach its full scientific potential, with at least 66 antennas. ALMA is the largest ground-based astronomy project in existence, and will comprise a giant array of 12-metre submillimetre quality antennas, with baselines of up to about 16 kilometres. An additional, compact array of 7-metre and 12-metre antennas will complement the main array. The ALMA project is an international collaboration between Europe, East Asia and North ...

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A Solargraph taken from APEX at Chajnantor

27. September 2010: This unusual and artistic image, made using a technique known as "solargraphy" in which a pinhole camera captures the movement of the Sun in the sky over many months, was taken from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope on the plateau of Chajnantor. The plateau is also where ESO, together with international partners, is building the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The solar trails in the image were recorded over half a year and clearly show the quality of the 5000-metre altitude site, high in the Chilean Andes, for astronomical observations. The idea for creating the solargraphs at ESO's telescopes came from Bob Fosbury, an astronomer based at ESO Headquarters in Germany, after learning about the technique from Finnish artist Tarja Trygg. Trygg provided the cameras, known as "cans". The cans are constructed from small black plastic canisters used for storing 35 mm film cassettes. A pinhole in a sheet ...

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Die Sterne leuchten hell über dem Paranal

20. September 2010: Nach Sonnenuntergang senkt sich die Dunkelheit über dem Paranal-Observatorium der ESO herab. Die Schwärze der Nacht ist jedoch durchsetzt mit unzähligen, glitzernden Sternen. Diese 15 Sekunden lang belichtete Aufnahme zeigt, wie eindrucksvoll der Nachthimmel über dem Paranal ist. Hoch in der chilenischen Atacamawüste, fern von aller Lichtverschmutzung, ist es sogar möglich, in einer mondlosen Nacht den eigenen Schatten zu sehen, der nur vom schwachen Schein der Milchstraße geworfen wird. ESO-Fotobotschafter José Francisco Salgado berichtet: „Der Paranal gehört zu den Orten mit dem dunkelsten und beständigsten Nachthimmel, unter dem ich bisher fotografieren konnte. Ich liebe es, Sternwarten zu abzubilden, und es ist sehr faszinierend wie man auf dem Paranal alleine durch die Sterne und das Zodiakallicht noch seine Umgebung sehen kann!” Im Bild scheinen die Sterne der Milchstraße geradezu aus der offenen Teleskopkuppel zu strömen. Der helle Fleck nahe am Teleskop ist der Carinanebel (NGC 3372), in dem sich einige der ...

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The Great Barred Spiral Galaxy

13. September 2010: Spiralling around, 61 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax (the Furnace), NGC 1365 is enormous. At 200000 light-years across, it is one of the largest galaxies known to astronomers. This, plus the sharply defined bar of old stars across its structure is why it is also known as the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy. Astronomers think that the Milky Way may look very similar to this galaxy, but at half the size. The bright centre of the galaxy is thought to be due to huge amounts of superhot gas ejected from the ring of material circling a central black hole. Young luminous hot stars, born out of the interstellar clouds, give the arms a prominent appearance and a blue colour. The bar and spiral pattern rotates, with one full turn taking about 350 million years. This image combines observations performed through three different filters (B, V, R) with the 1.5-metre ...

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Ein Laserstrahl zum Zentrum der Milchstraße

6. September 2010: Mitte August 2010 konnte ESO-Fotobotschafter Yuri Beletsky dieses beeindruckende Foto des Paranal-Observatoriums der ESO aufnehmen. Eine Gruppe von Astronomen beobachtete zu diesem Zeitpunkt das Zentrum der Milchstrasse mit Unterstützung der Laserleitsternsystems von Yepun, einem der vier Hauptteleskope am Very Large Telescope (VLT). Yepuns Laserstrahl durchquert den majestätischen Nachthimmel und erzeugt in 90 km Höhe einen künstlichen Stern in der Mesosphäre der Erde. Das Laserleitsternsystem (engl. Laser Guide Star oder kurz LGS) ist Teil des Systems adaptiver Optik am VLT und wird als Referenz verwendet, um den Einfluß der Erdatmosphäre auf die Bildqualität zu korrigieren. Die Farbe des Lasers ist exakt so eingestellt, dass damit Natriumatome in einer der der hochgelegenen Schichten der Atmosphäre zum Leuchten angeregt werden können - das Laserlicht hat dieselbe Farbe wie Straßenlaternen, die mit Natriumdampflampen betrieben werden. Man geht davon aus, dass die Natriumschicht ein Überbleibsel von Meteoriten ist, die in die Erdatmosphäre eintreten und verglühen. ...

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Arp 271 — galaxies drawn together*

30. August 2010: NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are two spiral galaxies of similar sizes engaged in a dramatic dance. It is not certain that this interaction will end in a collision and ultimately a merging of the two galaxies, although the galaxies have already been affected. Together known as Arp 271, this dance will last for tens of millions of years, creating new stars as a result of the mutual gravitational attraction between the galaxies, a pull seen in the bridge of stars already connecting the two. Located 90 million light-years away towards the constellation of Virgo (the Virgin), the Arp 271 pair is about 130 000 light-years across. It was originally discovered in 1785 by William Herschel. Quite possibly, our own Milky Way will undergo a similar collision in about five billion years with the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy, which is now located about 2.6 million light-years away from the Milky Way. ...

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Starry night at Paranal*

23. August 2010: During a night at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the stars seem to rotate around the southern celestial pole. The skies over Paranal provide splendid observing opportunities for the astronomers below. At the observatory on Cerro Paranal in the dry Atacama Desert of Chile, one of the observatory’s four 8.2-metre telescopes can be seen on the right performing its nightly task of looking at the heavens. Two of the four 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes are also seen in the picture. The dry, high environment at 2600 metres above sea level, and the extraordinarily advanced equipment makes observing time at the VLT highly sought after by astronomers around the world.

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The 2010 Perseids over the VLT

16. August 2010: Every year in mid-August the Perseid meteor shower has its peak. Meteors, colloquially known as “shooting stars”, are caused by pieces of cosmic debris entering Earth’s atmosphere at high velocity, leaving a trail of glowing gases. Most of the particles that cause meteors are smaller than a grain of sand and usually disintegrate in the atmosphere, only rarely reaching the Earth’s surface as a meteorite. The Perseid shower takes place as the Earth moves through the stream of debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. In 2010 the peak was predicted to take place between 12–13 August 2010. Despite the Perseids being best visible in the northern hemisphere, due to the path of Comet Swift-Tuttle's orbit, the shower was also spotted from the exceptionally dark skies over ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. In order not to miss any meteors in the display, ESO Photo Ambassador Stéphane Guisard set up 3 cameras ...

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Frenzied star birth in Haro 11

9. August 2010: Haro 11 appears to shine gently amid clouds of gas and dust, but this placid facade belies the monumental rate of star formation occurring in this “starburst” galaxy. By combining data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have created a new image of this incredibly bright and distant galaxy. The team of astronomers from Stockholm University, Sweden, and the Geneva Observatory, Switzerland, have identified 200 separate clusters of very young, massive stars. Most of these are less than 10 million years old. Many of the clusters are so bright in infrared light that astronomers suspect that the stars are still emerging from the cloudy cocoons where they were born. The observations have led the astronomers to conclude that Haro 11 is most likely the result of a merger between a galaxy rich in stars and a younger, gas-rich galaxy. Haro 11 is found to ...

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Exoplanetenjäger auf La Silla

2. August 2010: Nur wenige Teleskope sind so erfolgreich bei der Suche nach fernen Welten wie das 3,6-Meter-Teleskop der ESO und das Schweizer 1,2-Meter-Leonhard-Euler-Teleskop, die beide auf diesem Bild zu sehen sind. Das 3,6-Meter-Teleskop beherbergt HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher), einen Spektrografen mit unerreichter Genauigkeit, der mehrere Rekorde im Bereich der Exoplanetenforschung hält, unter anderem die Entdeckung des masseärmsten und des kleinsten jemals vermessenen Exoplaneten. Zusammen mit HARPS hat es das Leonhard-Euler-Teleskop Astronomen ermöglicht herauszufinden, dass sechs aus einer Stichprobe von 27 Exoplaneten sich auf ihren Umlaufbahnen entgegen der Rotationsrichtung ihrer Muttersterne bewegen, was eine unerwartete und ernste Herausforderug für die gegenwärtigen Theorien der Planetenentstehung darstellt. La Silla ist das erste Observatorium der ESO und liegt auf 2400 Metern über dem Meeresspiegel im südlichen Teil der chilenischen Atacamawüste. Es beherbergt nicht nur das 3,6-Meter-Teleskop, sondern auch das New Technology Telescope (NTT) und das MPG/ESO 2,2-Meter-Teleskop sowie mehrere kleinere oder nationale Teleskope.

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Arp 22 stretches out

26. Juli 2010: NGC 4027, also known as Arp 22, stretches its single extended spiral arm in this face-on image. Located about 75 million light-years away in the constellation of Corvus (the Crow), this barred spiral galaxy is identified as a peculiar galaxy by this extended arm, thought to be the result of a collision with another galaxy millions of years ago — most likely a small galaxy known as NGC 4027A. NGC 4027 is part of the NGC 4038 Group, a group of galaxies that also contains the famous distorted couple known as the Antennae Galaxies (see eso0209 and heic0615). This image is based on data collected with the ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (EFOSC) attached to the 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile. The data were collected through three broadband filters (B, V and R) and two narrowband filters (Hα and doubly ionised ...

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A European ALMA antenna takes a ride on a transporter

19. Juli 2010: A European Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) antenna takes a ride on Lore, one of the ALMA Transporters, at the 2900-metre altitude Operations Support Facility in the Chilean Andes. This took place on 23 June 2010, and was the first time that European antennas have been lifted with the transporters, a procedure that was fully successful, with both moves completed in a single day. The first two European antennas for ALMA have been moved to two new outdoor foundation pads in order to perform tests of their dish surface accuracy. In this process, known as holography, the antennas observe the signals from a special transmitter located on a nearby tower. In order to allow parallel assembly of several antennas, two new foundations have recently been built. As the newly built foundations lie between the original positions of the two antennas and the holography tower, the antennas were moved to the ...

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Partial solar eclipse over the VLT

12. Juli 2010: Yesterday 11 July 2010, between 20:15 and 22:51 CEST, the path of a total solar eclipse streaked across the Pacific Ocean touching several small islands including Tuamotu in French Polynesia, Mangaia in the Cook Islands and Chile's Easter Island. The total eclipse brushed the southern mainland of Chile, and was seen as a partial eclipse in the rest of the country. At ESO's Paranal Observatory ESO Photo Ambassador Yuri Beletsky snapped this photo near the mid-point of the eclipse. On the mainland of Chile, outside the zone of complete darkness, the partial eclipse was visible from ESO's Paranal Observatory. With the naked eye, eclipses are difficult — and dangerous — to watch until they reach totality, as the Sun is so bright. But a filter reduces the glare and here reveals the advancing disk of the Moon as it moves across the face of the Sun. In this photograph, the ...

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The oddest member of the Leo Triplet

28. Juni 2010: NGC 3628 is a spiral galaxy and a member of a small, but conspicuous group of galaxies located about 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation of Leo (the Lion). The other distinguished members of this family, known collectively as the Leo Triplet, are two well-known prominent spiral galaxies, Messier 65 and Messier 66 (not seen on the image), which were both discovered in 1780 by famous French comet hunter Charles Messier. NGC 3628 is the faintest of the trio and escaped Messier’s observations with his rather small telescope. It was discovered and catalogued by William Herschel only four years later. NGC 3628 hides its spiral structure because it is seen perfectly edge-on, exactly as we observe the Milky Way on a clear night. Its most distinctive feature is a dark band of dust that lies across the plane of the disc and which is visibly distorted outwards, as a ...

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Celestial Tic-Tac-Toe: Mercury, Venus and the Moon align

21. Juni 2010: One morning, in March 2008, a rare and beautiful sight greeted Yuri Beletsky, astronomer at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) observatory at Paranal in northern Chile. In the sky above the observing deck, the planets Mercury and Venus were in alignment above the Moon, in a celestial event known as a conjunction. Mercury, the smallest of the planets and shining highest in the sky in this image, orbits closest to the Sun of all the eight planets in our Solar System. Venus comes next, followed by Earth and its Moon. So this image captures the full stock of major astronomical bodies that pass between Earth and its host star. To the bottom left, seen as an impressive silhouette, and accompanying this cosmic chance encounter, is one of the four 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) deployed at Paranal. These mobile telescopes are used for interferometry, an astronomical technique that essentially combines the ...

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A quintuplet of ALMA antennas — and then there were five

14. Juni 2010: On the Chajnantor plateau, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is growing. On 31 May 2010, the number of ALMA’s state-of-the-art antennas on the 5000-metre-altitude plateau in the Chilean Andes increased to five. This photograph shows the five 12-metre diameter antennas at the Array Operations Site, clustered on the closely spaced foundation pads of what will be ALMA’s “Atacama Compact Array”. When complete, ALMA will have fifty-four 12-metre and twelve 7-metre diameter antennas, operating together as an interferometer: the signals from the individual antennas are combined in a specialised supercomputer — the ALMA correlator — so that the array of antennas acts as a single, giant telescope. The team of astronomers and engineers have now achieved a successful test linking all of these first five antennas together as an interferometer. This result follows the successful first measurements with a pair of antennas in October 2009 (see ESO Announcement) and the ...

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Spektakulärer Monduntergang hinter dem Cerro Paranal, der Heimat des Very Large Telescope

7. Juni 2010: Wenn der Mond untergeht, macht sich die Sonne bereit dazu, am gegenüberliegenden Horizont aufzugehen. Das Very Large Telescope hat seine “Augen” nach einer langen Beobachtungsnacht schon geschlossen. Teleskop-Personal und Astronomen schlafen bereits, während Techniker, Ingenieure und Tagastronomen für den neuen Arbeitstag erwachen. Der Betrieb endet nie am produktivsten bodengebundenen Observatorium der Welt. ESO-Mitarbeiter Gordon Gillet heißt den Tag mit diesem atemberaubenden Foto aus 14 Kilometern Entfernung willkommen, es wurde von der Straße zum Cerro Armazones aus aufgenommen, der von der ESO als Standort für das geplante 40-Meter Extremly Large Telescope (E-ELT) ausgewählt wurde. Auch wenn es auf den ersten Blick so wirkt, das Bild ist keine Fotomontage. Der Mond erscheint sehr groß, weil er nahe am Horizont steht und unsere Wahrnehmung darauf ausgerichtet ist, Objekte in Relation zu Referenzobjekten am Erdboden zu vergleichen. Um ein so spektakulär „nahes“ Bild aufzunehmen, bedarf es eines 500mm-Objektivs. Die lange Brennweite reduziert die Tiefe ...

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The Blinking Galaxy

31. Mai 2010: NGC 6118, a grand-design spiral galaxy, shines bright in this image, displaying its central bar and tight spiral arms from its home in the constellation of Serpens (The Snake). The galaxy is sometimes known to amateur astronomers as the “Blinking Galaxy” because this relatively faint, fuzzy object would appear to flick into existence when viewed through their telescopes in a certain orientation, and then suddenly disappear again as the eye position shifted. The brilliant blue star-forming regions of the galaxy, where hot young stars are born, are beautifully illuminated, even from over 80 million light-years away. In 2004, regular observers of this galaxy saw a “new star” appear near the edge of the galaxy (above the centre of the image). Far from being a new star, this object, supernova 2004dk, is in fact the final, powerful burst of light emitted by the explosion of a star. Though shy to lesser ...

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