Ugens billede

29. marts 2010: A European antenna for ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is placed on its base. The 12-metre diameter reflecting dish is attached to the base, with the whole structure weighing over 100 tonnes. When complete, the reflecting surface of the dish will be accurate to less than the thickness of a sheet of paper, and the antenna will be able to point precisely enough to pick out a golf ball at a distance of 15 kilometres. This is the second European antenna to be assembled at the 2,900-metre altitude Operations Support Facility in Chile. The antennas will ultimately be transported to the Chajnantor plateau, 5000 metres above sea level in the Chilean Andes. ALMA, which will comprise 66 giant 12-metre and 7-metre diameter antennas observing the Universe at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ESO ...

22. marts 2010: NGC 5189 is a planetary nebula with an oriental twist. Similar in appearance to a Chinese dragon, these red and green cosmic fireworks are the last swansong of a dying star. At the end of its life, a star with a mass less than eight times that of the Sun will blow its outer layers away, giving rise to a planetary nebula. Some of these stellar puffballs are almost round, resembling huge soap bubbles or giant planets (hence the name), but others, such as NGC 5189 are more intricate. In particular, this planetary nebula exhibits a curious “S”-shaped profile, with a central bar that is most likely the projection of an inner ring of gas discharged by the star, seen edge on. The details of the physical processes producing such a complex symmetry from a simple, spherical star are still the object of astronomical controversy. One possibility is that the ...

15. marts 2010: Solargraphy, the art of using a single long-term exposure with a pinhole camera to photograph the movement of the Sun over the course of many weeks, helps show just why Cerro Paranal in northern Chile makes the perfect home for ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The pinhole camera, made from a small film canister and a piece of photographic paper, was placed on the roof of the VLT control building by Gerd Hüdepohl from 15 October to 26 December 2009, covering spring in the southern hemisphere. The white streaks across the top of the image are the Sun’s progress across the sky over the whole period. When clouds come between the Sun and the camera, breaks in the streak form but, as can be seen here, no clouds obscured the sky during the entire exposure. Perfect astronomy weather in other words! The VLT’s Unit Telescope 1 is visible as a ...

8. marts 2010: The European Southern Observatory’s Headquarters chills out in the snow beneath the full Moon one late afternoon in January. The winter snows at the Garching technical campus north of Munich, Germany make a stark contrast to the dry deserts of ESO’s observatories in Chile. ESO Headquarters is the scientific, technical and administrative centre of ESO and is where technical development programmes are carried out, providing the observatories with the most advanced instruments in the world. It is also home to the Space Telescope — European Coordinating Facility, operated jointly by ESO and the European Space Agency. This image is available as a mounted image in the ESOshop.

1. marts 2010: Glowing in the cosmos at a distance of about 50 million light-years away, the galaxy NGC 936 bears a striking resemblance to the Twin Ion Engine (TIE) starfighters used by the evil Dark Lord Darth Vader and his crew in the epic motion picture Star Wars. The galaxy’s shiny bulge and a bar-like structure crossing it bring to mind the central engine and cockpit of the spacecraft; while a ring of stars surrounding the galactic core completes the parallel, corresponding to the wings of the TIE fighters that are equipped with solar panels. This galaxy harbours exclusively old stars and shows no sign of any recent star formation. Bars such as that observed in NGC 936 are common features of galaxies; however, this one is significantly more marked than average. Although a perfect symbol for the dark side of the “Force”, it is still debatable whether this galaxy is dominated, ...

22. februar 2010: In this dazzling image, the galaxy NGC 1427A is seen as it travels through the Fornax cluster of galaxies, to which it belongs. NGC 1427A is an example of a dwarf irregular galaxy, a type of galaxy that is significantly less bright than regular galaxies and characterised by a peculiar shape. In this particular case, the shape of the galaxy has been forged by its rapid, upwards motion through the cluster: with a speed of two million kilometres per hour relative to the cluster, NCG 1427A is being torn apart and will eventually be disrupted. The interaction with the Fornax cluster has led to the birth of many stars, seen here as a boomerang-shaped region of young, glowing stars in the galaxy. NGC 1427A exhibits a striking resemblance to one of our galactic neighbours, the Large Magellanic Cloud, which has undergone similar episodes of star formation, triggered by its interaction ...

15. februar 2010: Portrayed in this image is the spiral galaxy NGC 4945, a close neighbour of the Milky Way. Belonging to the Centaurus A group of galaxies, it is located at a distance of almost 13 million light-years. Showing a remarkable resemblance to our own galaxy, NGC 4945 also hides a supermassive black hole behind the thick, ring-shaped structure of dust visible in the picture. But, unlike the black hole at the centre of our Milky Way, the million-solar-mass black hole inside NGC 4945 is an Active Galactic Nucleus that is frantically consuming any surrounding matter, and so releasing tremendous amounts of energy. This image combines observations performed through three different filters (B, V, R) with the 1.5-metre Danish telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile.

8. februar 2010: En fugl der forvilder sig ud i den tyndt befolkede og ugæstfrie Atacamaørken i det nordlige Chile, kunne godt tro, at den højteknologiske oase, som the Very Large Telescope (VLT) udgør, er et fatamorgana. Det er Verdens mest avancerede jordbaserede astronomiske observatorium, som huser fire 8.2 meter såkaldte unit-telescopes, fire hjælpeteleskoper, the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), og the 4.1-metre Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), der ses i baggrunden på det næste bjerg.Luftfotoet viser også andre bygninger, blandt andet the Observatory Control Room building, på den forreste kant af hovedplatformen.

1. februar 2010: This aerial photograph shows the summit of Cerro Paranal in northern Chile, the home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). This flagship facility for ground-based astronomy hosts four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes along with four mobile 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes. These can work together, in groups of two or three, as one giant telescope, known as the VLT Interferometer, or VLTI. This image displays the winding access road that leads up to the observing platform as well as the Observatory Control Room in the front. The picture helps give a sense of the remoteness of the VLT site, which is located in the extremely arid Atacama Desert at an altitude of 2600 metres. The first Unit Telescope began operations at Paranal in 1999. The VLT Survey Telescope, which is scheduled to begin observations in 2010, is missing from this photo, taken in 2004.

25. januar 2010: This impressive vertical panorama shows the ESO 3.6-metre telescope in great detail. The telescope is located on the 2400 m high La Silla mountain, home of ESO’s first observing site in the southern edges of the Atacama Desert. Equipped with HARPS, the best exoplanet finder in the world, the ESO 3.6-metre telescope was commissioned in 1977 and completely upgraded in 1999. The primary mirror is located below the dark protective cover, and the large black structure above holds the secondary mirror. The white cube on top of the secondary mirror mount contains the computer that controls the secondary mirror.

18. januar 2010: Denne arkitektoniske koncepttegning af ESOs planlagte Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), viser verdens største planlagte optiske teleskop stirrende mod himlen.Planlagt til at begynde operationer tidligt i det næste årti, vil ELT takle de største videnskabelige udfordringer i vor tid.Et vigtigt mål vil være at opspore jordlignende planeter omkring andre stjerner i "beboelige zone", hvor livet kunne eksistere - en af ​​den moderne astronomis hellige graler.ELT vil også bidrage væsentligt til kosmologi ved at måle egenskaberne af de første stjerner og galakser og undersøge kendetegnene ved ​​mørkt stof og mørk energi i detaljer.Oven i dette, har astronomerne også planer for det uventede - nye og uforudsigelige spørgsmål vil helt sikkert opstå fra de opdagelser, der gøres med ELT.Med et primærspejl der måler hele 39 meter på tværs, vil ELT indsamle 25 gange mere lys end et af 8,2-meter teleskoperne på ESOs Very Large Telescope observatorium i Chile, som i øjeblikket er en ...

11. januar 2010: Billedet viser det smukke zodiakallys som en trekant af lys, der bedst kan ses i nætter fri for månelys og lysforurening. Det er taget fra ESOs La Silla observatorium i Chile i september 2009. Skyhavet har lagt sig i dalen under La Silla, som ligger i 2.400 m højde. Rundt omkring stikker de lavereliggende toppe og bjergrygge igennem skyerne. Udendørsbelysningen fra fjerne byer oplyser skyerne nedefra med et orange skær. Zodiakallyset skyldes sollys, som reflekteres af støvpartikler imellem Solen og Jorden. Man ser det bedst tæt efter solnedgang eller før solopgang. Som navnet antyder, strækker dette lysskær sig altid langs zodiaken, altså Dyrekredsens stjernebilleder. Zodiakallyset ligger i det samme plan i rummet, som planeterne kredser omkring Solen. Solsystemet er "fladt" og derfor holder støvet sig i samme plan som planeterne.

4. januar 2010: This image shows the interior of one of the four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Paranal, Chile. Designated Unit Telescope 1, or UT1, and named Antu, this complex science machine has been in operation at Paranal since 1999. Just before sunset, technicians retract UT1’s windshield and work to finalise the preparations at the telescope for the night-time observation run. During the day, the enclosure is kept shut to protect the delicate and valuable scientific equipment inside, as well as to ensure minimal temperature differences between the telescope and the atmosphere at opening. To the left of the telescope’s main mirror housing, in the centre of the image, is the Infrared Spectrometer And Array Camera (ISAAC), which was, until recently, attached to this instrument. It has now been moved to another of the Unit Telescopes, UT3 or Melipal. This image is available as a mounted image ...

28. december 2009: A new architectural concept drawing of ESO’s planned Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) shows the telescope at work, with its dome open and its record-setting 40-metre-class primary mirror pointed to the sky. In this illustration, clouds float over the valley overlooked by the ELT’s summit. The comparatively tiny pickup truck parked at the base of the ELT helps to give a sense of the scale of this massive telescope. The ELT dome will be similar in size to a football stadium, with a diameter at its base of over 100 m and a height of over 80 m. Scheduled to begin operations early in the next decade, the ELT will help track down Earth-like planets around other stars in the “habitable zones” where life could exist — one of the Holy Grails of modern observational astronomy. The ELT will also make fundamental contributions to cosmology by measuring the properties of the ...

21. december 2009: Denne udsigt over ESOs La Silla observatorium, afslører den prægtige nattehimmel og viser flere af teleskopbygningerne placeret på stedet.Det glødende bånd i Mælkevejens plan går skråt gennem himlen fra øverst til venstre til nederst i midten, hvor den lukkede kuppel der beskytter GPO (Grand Prism Objectif) og, som også var hjemsted for Marly, 1-meter teleskopet i forgrunden, sammen med det danske 1,54 meter teleskop.De spøgelsesagtige, blålige objekter over GPO kupplen er to galaktiske naboer til Mælkevejen, kendt som Store- og Lille Magellanske Sky.Samlingen af teleskoper på La Silla, omfatter også blandt andet ESOs 3,6-meter teleskop, hjemsted for "High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher" (HARPS), verdens førende exoplanetjæger og 3,58-meter New Technology Telescope (NTT), som var banebrydende for teleskop teknik og design, og var det første i verden til at have et computerstyret hovedspejl (aktiv optik), en teknologi udviklet af ESO og som nu anvendes på de fleste af verdens aktive ...

14. december 2009: The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), with a main mirror 39 metres in diameter, will be the world’s biggest eye on the sky when it becomes operational early in the next decade. The ELT will tackle the biggest scientific challenges of our time, and aim for a number of notable firsts, including tracking down Earth-like planets around other stars in the “habitable zones” where life could exist — one of the Holy Grails of modern observational astronomy. The telescope design itself is revolutionary and is based on a novel five-mirror scheme that results in exceptional image quality. The primary mirror consists of almost 800 segments, each 1.4 metres wide, but only 50 mm thick. The optical design calls for an immense secondary mirror 4.2 metres in diameter, bigger than the primary mirrors of any of ESO's telescopes at La Silla. Adaptive mirrors are incorporated into the optics of the telescope to ...

7. december 2009: ESO astronomer Yuri Beletsky captured images of the transport of one of the 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes (AT) that compose, together with their larger 8.2-metre companions, ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) array. The AT was moved with the utmost care from the base camp, where it had been undergoing maintenance, including the recoating of its mirrors, back to the VLT platform on top of Cerro Paranal. The ATs form part of the VLT Interferometer (VLTI), allowing this unique facility to operate every night. The ATs are mounted on tracks and can be moved between precisely defined observing positions, collecting light that is then combined in the VLTI. The ATs are very unusual telescopes, as they are self-contained in individual 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 next. ...

30. november 2009: After almost two months of life-changing experiences, bringing the excitement of astronomy to young children in Chile, Bolivia and Peru, the journey of the GalileoMobile Project has come to an end. As illustrated in this image, the astronomers and educators in the Galilomobile team visited numerous schools and villages during their expedition, engaging young students in educational activities about astronomy and science, and offering amazing stargazing opportunities to the local communities, in a region with one of the clearest skies on Earth. Last week the team visited ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), then continued to Taltal, the closest town to the VLT’s home, Cerro Paranal. Around sunset on 26 November, the GalileoMobile team showed the community of Taltal the highlights of the whole voyage, a voyage that covered around 5,000 kilometres through the Andes. The GalileoMobile was received with great enthusiasm by the people of Taltal. Hundreds of students took ...

23. november 2009: This dramatic triptych shows the Moon rise from left to right through the night sky over ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) observatory at Paranal in northern Chile. Already aloft in the heavens and glowing in the centre of the image is Venus, Earth’s closest planetary neighbour. Shining to Venus’s right, the giant, though more distant planet, Jupiter appears as a small orb that seems to rotate around Venus as time passes. Such apparent celestial near misses — although the heavenly bodies are actually tens to hundreds of millions of kilometres apart — are called conjunctions. Still other sights delight in the sky over Paranal. The radiant, reddish plane of the Milky Way smoulders on the horizon, with massive bands of dust giving this bright region a mottled complexion. On the ground, an 8.2-metre VLT Unit Telescope on the right and a 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescope to the left silently witness the ...

16. november 2009: A probe was launched last Friday (13 November 2009) from ESO’s Paranal observatory in northern Chile — home of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) — aboard a weather balloon. Such probes, called radiosondes, measure various atmospheric parameters and transmit them to a receiver on the ground. Researchers from ESO, the University of Lethbridge (Canada) and Universidad de Valparaiso (Chile) are currently in the middle of a 12-day programme, during which they plan to launch 29 radiosondes. Each night, parallel observations with the VLT instruments UVES, CRIRES and VISIR are carefully orchestrated to coincide with two additional radiosonde launches, while an infrared radiometer provides continuous coverage. This powerful combination of instruments and methods will provide a better understanding of the distribution and amount of water vapour in the atmosphere above Paranal, which is highly relevant for astronomical observations. The knowledge gained from these data can be used to optimise science operations ...