Just as René Magritte wrote “This is not a pipe” on his famous painting, this is also not a pipe. It is however a picture of part of a vast dark cloud of interstellar dust called the Pipe Nebula. This new and very detailed image of what is also known as Barnard 59 was captured by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. By coincidence this image is appearing on the 45th anniversary of the painter’s death.
The release, images and videos are available on:
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1233/
Translations are available in: Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese/Brazil, Portuguese/Portugal, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian
Space Scoop - the children's version of this release is available at: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1233/kids/
Kind regards,
The ESO Education and Public Outreach Department
15 August 2012