Zooming in on The Eyes

This sequence starts with a wide-field view of part of the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin), along with the neighbouring constellation of Coma Berenices (The Hair of Queen Berenice) that shows up as a bright cluster of stars at the left. As we zoom in we can see several galaxies belonging to the Virgo cluster of galaxies and we then focus on the pair of interacting galaxies NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, nicknamed The Eyes, lying about 50 million light-years from us. The final detailed view shows a new image of The Eyes from the VLT’s FORS2 instrument at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile.