eso9924 — Press Release
Of Holes in the Sky and Pretty Galaxies
30 April 1999: During the continued tests of the two astronomical instruments (FORS1 and ISAAC) at the first VLT 8.2-m Unit Telescope, ANTU (formerly UT1), impressive images have been obtained of a variety of celestial objects. These observations were made through different optical filtres. In some cases, CCD frames could be combined into colour renderings of the objects. We show here some of the new images, obtained with the multi-mode FORS1 instrument shortly before the arrival of the first "visiting astronomers" at Paranal in early April 1999. The first (20a/99) is of a small and nearby, dark cloud, a type of object that has not been imaged before by the VLT, and among the galaxies, the warped dust band in a "Sombrero"-like galaxy is of particular scientific interest. In most cases, the image quality is of the order of 0.6 arcsec.