Digitized Sky Survey image around R Aquarii

While testing a new subsystem on the SPHERE planet-hunting instrument on ESO’s Very Large telescope, astronomers were able to capture dramatic details of the turbulent stellar relationship in the binary star R Aquarii with unprecedented clarity —even compared to observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2), and shows the region surrounding R Aquarii, the vivid orange point at the centre of the image.