Ugens billede

10. januar 2011: Før en ny stjerneklar nat falder på over ESOs Paranal Observatorium, der er hjemsted for Very Large Telescope (VLT), opstår der smuk en palette af intense farver, som om det var til ære for observatørerne. Disse farver kan kun ses med sådan dybde fra steder som Paranal, hvor atmosfæren er ekstraordinært ren. Kigger man mod vest, over Stillehavet, bliver himlen orange og rød under solnedgangen. Dette billede viser dog udsigten mod øst og dermed bort fra solen, efter at den lige er gået ned. Den gråblå skygge over horisonten er skyggen af ​​vores egen planet. Over dette ses en lyserød glød kendt som "Venus' bælte", et fænomen der skyldes det rødlige lys fra den nedgående Sun, der bliver spredt af Jordens atmosfære. I midten af ​​billedet ses det fjerde 8,2 meter Unit Telescope (UT4), en del af VLT. Mapuche-navnet som UT4 bærer er "Yepun", hvilket betyder Venus. Udover at arbejde ...

3. januar 2011: Rullende røde bakker strækker sig ud under den usædvanligt klare blå himmel, der er typisk for ESOs Paranal-observatorium.Selvom teleskopkuplerne lukkes ved daggry, og intet synes at bevæge sig på overfladen af ​​denne golde ørken, hviler ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) aldrig.Fra tidligt om morgenen, har et team af ingeniører og teknikere arbejdet hårdt på at forberede teleskoper og instrumenter til den næste "perfekte nat".Den 2600 meter høje Cerro Paranal skiller sig ud i midten af ​​denne panoramaudsigt, her fotograferet mod syd.Den fladtrykt bjergtop er hjemsted for VLT, verdens mest avancerede jordbaserede optiske og nærinfrarøde astronomiske observatorium.VLT har fire 8,2 meter Unit teleskoper (UTS), plus fire 1,8 meter Auxiliary Teleskoper (ATS).I dette billede, ses kun to af UT bygningerne, sammen med det mindre 2,6-meter VLT Survey Telescope (VST).Til højre for Cerro Paranal i baggrunden, ses det hav af skyer, der typisk dækker kysten af ​​Stillehavet - kun 12 km borte.Den kolde ...

27. december 2010: This splendid picture shows the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal in the Chilean Atacama desert. The mountaintop, 120 km south of the town of Antofagasta, is a remote haven for scientific exploration.Its distance from populated areas means that light pollution is essentially non-existent, which helps to guarantee clear views for the telescopes. It also ensures that activity is not disturbed by other human activities, such as traffic on nearby roads or dusty air from mines. The desert location means that moisture in the atmosphere is at a very low level, which contributes to the excellent atmospheric conditions. As well as the VLT, Paranal Observatory is also home to the VISTA telescope on an adjacent peak, from which this photograph was taken. The road which links the two peaks can be seen in the centre of the image, winding through the desert landscape.The two distinct bright ...

20. december 2010: On a remote mountaintop, 2600 metres above sea level in the Chilean Atacama Desert, lies the world’s most advanced visible-light observatory. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) is not only a window on the Universe; it is also a celebration of modern science and technology. This photograph shows two of the four Unit Telescopes that make up the VLT. With its giant 8.2-metre diameter mirrors, sensitive detectors, and state-of-the art adaptive optics system, the VLT uses cutting-edge technology at every opportunity. Even the telescope enclosures — the domes — are highly advanced, being thermally controlled to reduce air turbulence in the telescope structure. Every night the VLT studies the sky to make discoveries about the Universe. Visible in this photo, sweeping between the two Unit Telescopes, is the plane of the Milky Way. Containing billions of stars, it is our own corner of the cosmos, but the VLT's ...

13. december 2010: As soon as the Sun sets over the Chilean Atacama Desert, ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) begins catching light from the far reaches of the Universe. The VLT has four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes such as the one shown in the photograph. Many of the photons — particles of light — that are collected have travelled through space for billions of years before reaching the telescope’s primary mirror. The giant mirror acts like a high-tech “light bucket”, gathering as many photons as possible and sending them to sensitive detectors. Careful analysis of the data from these instruments allows astronomers to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos. The telescopes have a variety of instruments, which allow them to observe in a range of wavelengths from near-ultraviolet to mid-infrared. The VLT also boasts advanced adaptive optics systems, which counteract the blurring effects of the Earth's atmosphere, producing images so sharp that they could ...

6. december 2010: Imagine being a fly on the wall of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the world's most advanced optical observatory. You could have a view a little like this. Fish-eye photography gives this unusual view of the 8.2-metre diameter telescope, poised and ready to begin gathering light from the deep recesses of the Universe as soon as the dome opens and starlight pours in. The VLT has four of these 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes, called Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun. These are the Mapuche names for the Sun, Moon, Southern Cross and Venus. This photograph shows Yepun. The names are from the native language of the indigenous people who live mostly in the area south of the Bio-Bio River, some 500 km south of Santiago de Chile. The VLT is so powerful that it allows us to see objects four thousand million times fainter than those that can be seen with ...

29. november 2010: NGC 520 — also known as Arp 157 — looks like a galaxy in the midst of exploding. In reality, it’s the exact opposite. Two enormous spiral galaxies are crashing into each other, melding and forming a new conglomerate. This happens slowly, over millions of years — the whole process started some 300 million years ago. The object, about 100 000 light-years across, is now in the middle stage of the merging process, as the two nuclei haven’t merged yet, but the two discs have. The merger features a tail of stars and a prominent dust lane. NGC 520 is one of the brightest interacting galaxies in the sky and lies in the direction of Pisces (the Fish), approximately 100 million light-years from Earth. This image was taken by the ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera attached to the 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla in Chile. It is based on ...

22. november 2010: The centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is again in the sights of ESO telescopes. This time it’s the turn of ISAAC, the VLT’s near- and mid-infrared spectrometer and camera. From Chile’s Atacama Desert, site of the ESO observatories, the Milky Way offers magnificent views, particularly in the southern hemisphere winter, when the central region of our galaxy is most visible (see eso0934). However, the Galactic Centre itself, located about 27 000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius, hides behind thick clouds of interstellar dust, which appear as dark obscuring lanes in visible light, but which are transparent at longer wavelengths such as the infrared. In this image, the infrared observations clearly reveal the dense clustering of stars in the galactic core. ESO telescopes have been tracking stars orbiting the centre of the Milky Way for more than 18 years, getting the highest resolution images of this ...

15. november 2010: Among the myriad of stars in this image shines NGC 2257, a collection of cosmic gems bound tightly by gravity. Many billions of years old, but still sparkling brightly, it is an eye-catching astronomical object. NGC 2257 is a globular cluster, the name given to the roughly spherical concentrations of stars that orbit galactic cores, but are often found far out from the centres in the halo areas of galaxies. Globular clusters contain very old stars, being typically over 10 billion years old, and can therefore be used like a "fossil record" to learn more about the Universe’s past. They are densely packed, with tens to hundreds of thousands of stars gathered within a diameter of just a few tens of light-years. NGC 2257 lies on the outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. It is one of 15 very old globular ...

8. november 2010: Dette imponerende billede, der blev taget den 10. maj 2010 af ESO-astronomen Yuri Beletsky, viser den skønne himmel over Paranal. Et af 8,2-meter teleskoperne på ESOs Very Large Telescope (VLT), Yepun, Unit Telescope 4, ses mod den vidunderlige baggrund af de utallige stjerner og støv, der udgør Mælkevejen. En laserstråle, der sigter perfekt mod Galaksens centrum, kommer ud af Yepun. Når den anvendes sammen med det adaptive optiske system, giver den kunstige stjerne, der er skabt af laserstrålen, teleskopet mulighed for at foretage observationer i form af billeder og spektre, som er fri for uskarpheder, der skyldes turbulenser i atmosfæren. Da dette billede blev taget, brugte astronomerne Stefan Gillessen og Hauke ​​Enkel SINFONI-instrumentet sammen med guidestjernen frembragt af laseren, til at studere centret i vores Mælkevej, hvor et supermassivt sort hul lurer. Billedets synsfelt er meget bredt, omkring 180 grader. En af de 1,8 meter høje hjælpeteleskoper, der anvendes til ...

1. november 2010: Astronomer har ved hjælp af data fra ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), på Paranalobservatoriet i Chile, lavet et imponerende sammensat billede af tågen Messier 17, også kendt som Omegatågen eller Svanetågen.Det malerilignende billede viser enorme skyer af gas og støv som er oplyst af den intense stråling fra nogle unge stjerner.Billedet viser et centralt område omkring 15 lysår på tværs. Selve tågen er endnu større, omkring 40 lysår i alt.Messier 17 ligger i stjernebilledet Sagittarius (Skytten), og tågen er omkring 6000 lysår fra Jorden.Det er et populært objekt for amatørastronomer, der kan få billeder af høj kvalitet ved hjælp af små teleskoper.Disse dybe VLT observationer blev gjort ved nær-infrarøde bølgelængder med Infrared Spectrometer And Array Camera (ISAAC) instrumentet.De anvendte filtre, var J (1,25 um, vist med blåt), H (1,6 um, vist med grønt), og K (2,2 um, vist med rødt).I midten af ​​billedet ses en hob af massive unge stjerner, ...

25. oktober 2010: Stjernerne roterer omkring den sydlige himmelpol en nat på ESOs La Silla-observatorium i det nordlige Chile.De tågede områder til højre skyldes de Magellanske Skyer, to små nabogalakser til Mælkevejen.Kuplen, der ses på billedet, er vært for ESOs 3,6 meter teleskop, som er hjemsted for HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher), verdens førende exoplanetjæger.Den rektangulære bygning, som ses i nederste højre hjørne af billedet, indeholder 0,25-meter TAROT teleskopet, der er designet til at reagere meget hurtigt, når der registreres et gammaglimt.Andre teleskoper på La Silla omfatter 2,2-meter MPG / ESO teleskopet, og 3,58-meter New Technology Telescope, det første teleskop til at bruge aktiv optik, og som sådan, forløberen for alle moderne store teleskoper.La Silla var ESO første observatorium og er stadig en af ​​de førende observatorier på den sydlige halvkugle.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

20. september 2010: Efter solnedgang på ESOs Paranal-observatorium sænker mørket sig, men den sorte himmel er oversået med et herligt utal af funklende stjerner.Denne 15-sekunders eksponering viser, hvor flot nattehimlen er over Paranal.Højt i Atacama-ørkenen i Chile, langt fra alle kilder til lysforurening, på en klar nat uden måne, er det muligt at se sin egen skygge kastet af lyset af Mælkevejen alene.Sådan siger billedkunstner og ESO fotoambassadørJosé Francisco Salgado, "Himlen over Paranal er blandt de mørkeste og roligste jeg har fotograferet. Jeg elsker at fotografere observatorier og på Paranal er det utroligt, hvordan man stadig kan se omkring sig, kun ved stjernelys og zodiakallys!".I billedet ser stjernerne i Mælkevejen ud til at strømme ud fra den åbne kuppel på observatoriet.Det lyseste område tæt på teleskopet er Carina-tågen (NGC 3372), som indeholder nogle af de tungeste stjerner i vores galakse (se for eksempel her og eso1031).Nær toppen af ​​billedet ses stjernerne i Crux, ...

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 ...

6. september 2010: Midt i august 2010 tog ESO Photo Ambassador Yuri Beletsky dette flotte billede ved ESOs Paranalobservatorium. En gruppe astronomer var i færd med at observere Mælkevejens centrum, og brugte laser guidestjerne installationen på Yepun, som er et af de fire Unit Teleskoper, der udgør Very Large Telescope (VLT). Yepuns laserstråle krydser hen over den imponerende sydhimmel og danner en kunsti stjerne 90 km oppe i Jordens atmosfære. Laser Guide Star (LGS) er en del af VLTs adaptive optik, og det bruges til at korrigere atmosfærens lufturo væk på billederne. Laserens farve er nøjagtigt justeret til at afsætte sin energi i et lag af natriumatomer, som findes i atmosfærens øvre lag - men kan se den samme farve i de natriumlamper, som findes langs mange veje. Laget af natriumatomer menes at være resterne af meteoritter, som kommer ind i atmosfæren som stjerneskud. Når natriumatomerne eksiteres af laserlyset, begynder de selv at ...

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. ...