NACO and ERIS comparison of the inner ring of NGC 1097

ERIS, the Very Large Telescope’s newest infrared eye on the sky, reveals the inner ring of the galaxy NGC 1097 in stunning detail. This galaxy is located 45 million light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Fornax. ERIS has captured the gaseous and dusty ring that lies at the very centre of the galaxy. The bright spots in the ring are stellar nurseries, shown in unprecedented detail. 

This image has been taken through four different filters by ERIS’s state-of-the-art infrared imager, the Near Infrared Camera System — or NIX, which will take over the role of the very successful NACO imager. NACO also used adaptive optics to correct for the blurring caused by atmospheric turbulence, but ERIS’s more modern capabilities, coupled with the VLT’s Adaptive Optics Facility, deliver much sharper images. To put NIX’s resolution in perspective, this image shows, in detail, a portion of the sky less than 0.03% the size of the full Moon.