Fotografia da Semana

24 de Outubro de 2011: Not all spiral galaxies have to be picture-perfect to be striking. Messier 96, also known as NGC 3368, is a case in point: its core is displaced from the centre, its gas and dust are distributed asymmetrically and its spiral arms are ill-defined. But this portrait, taken with the FORS1 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shows that imperfection is beauty in Messier 96. The galaxy's core is compact but glowing, and the dark dust lanes around it move in a delicate swirl towards the nucleus. And the spiral arms, patchy rings of young blue stars, are like necklaces of blue pearls. Messier 96 lies in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). It is the largest galaxy in the Leo I group of galaxies; including its outermost spiral arms, it spans some 100 000 light-years in diameter — about the size of our Milky Way. Its graceful imperfections likely result ...

17 de Outubro de 2011: The night sky above the 2600-metre-high Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert in Chile is dark and clear. So clear, that very long sequences of photos can easily be taken without a single cloud obscuring the stars as they rotate around the southern celestial pole. The site is home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) array. Its four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes dominate this image made by Farid Char, a student at Chile’s Universidad Católica del Norte. One of the smaller Auxiliary Telescopes is also visible, hiding in the background in the bottom left corner. But the star of the show is the striking starry sky. Made by combining 450 exposures of 20 seconds each, the image captures the apparent stellar movement during two and a half hours. This movement, signalled by dotted trails, is illusory: the Earth, and not the stars, is rotating as time goes by. The sequence has ...

10 de Outubro de 2011: This spectacular aerial view shows the ALMA Operations Support Facility (OSF), located 2900 metres above sea level in the foothills of the Chilean Andes, near San Pedro de Atacama. ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is currently under construction on the 5000-metre-high Chajnantor plateau. Such a high altitude site is necessary for ALMA’s array of antennas to observe the Universe in millimetre and submillimetre radiation, but the lack of oxygen makes the Array Operations Site (AOS) a very uncomfortable place for people to work. For this reason, as much of the scientific and technical work as possible takes place at the OSF, which is 2100 metres lower in altitude. The antennas are even controlled remotely from the OSF. In this picture, from the bottom left to the centre right, the North American, the Japanese and the European antenna assembly facilities are clearly distinguishable. In these areas, the antennas are assembled ...

3 de Outubro de 2011: A new Very Large Telescope (VLT) image of the Antennae Galaxies gives us what may be the second-best visible-light view yet of this striking pair of colliding galaxies with dramatically distorted shapes. This amazing object takes its name from the long antenna-like "arms" extending far out from the nuclei of the two galaxies, best seen in wider-field images by ground-based telescopes such as the one at this link. This VLT view focuses instead on the galaxies’ nuclei, where the real action is taking place as the two galaxies merge into a single giant galaxy. Spurred by shock waves created by their gravitational wrestling, the two galaxies have become dotted with brilliant blue hot young stars in star-forming regions, surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, shown here in pink. The two pale yellow blobs are the cores of the original galaxies, shining with the light of old stars and picked out by ...

26 de Setembro de 2011: When light from all four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Cerro Paranal on 17 March 2011 was successfully combined for the first time (ann11021), ESO Photo Ambassador Gerhard Hüdepohl was there to capture the moment. Having all four of the Unit Telescopes (UTs) working as one telescope observing the same object was a major step in the development of the VLT. While mostly used for individual observations, the UTs were always designed to be able to operate together as part of the VLT Interferometer (VLTI). All the UTs are pointed in the same direction, at the same object, although this isn’t obvious because of the wide-angle lens used to take the photo. The light collected by each of the telescopes was then combined using an instrument called PIONIER [1]. When combined, the UTs can potentially provide an image sharpness that equals that of a telescope ...

19 de Setembro de 2011: Esta semana temos algo um pouco diferente — uma imagem criada por fãs do "Pequeno Mundo" do Observatório do Paranal do ESO, que é um exemplo de algumas das coisas que as pessoas fazem com as imagens e vídeos do ESO. Quase todas as imagens e vídeos do ESO são postas à disposição do público sob uma licença muito flexível, Creative Commons Attribution, o que torna muito fácil cada um criar seu próprio material! Esta interpretação de uma Fotografia da Semana anterior foi criada pelo astrónomo Alex Parker e captura um pouco da essência do Observatório do Paranal — um pequeno mundo onde os astrónomos deixam a Terra para trás e viajam para as estrelas ... pelo menos metaforicamente. O observatório situa-se nas profundezas do deserto do Atacama, que pode realmente parecer um ambiente estranho. Está longe da civilização e da vida moderna, um lugar onde os astrónomos visitantes passam ...

12 de Setembro de 2011: Deep in the heart of the Atacama Desert, home of the Paranal Observatory, the Sun is setting at the start of another clear night. This charming photograph, taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Gianluca Lombardi shows one of four Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) that belong to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) sitting boldly against a vivid sky of pink and blue. The full Moon, seen hovering over the horizon, has a distinctly reddish hue, a phenomenon caused by the scattering of light by Earth’s atmosphere. When the Moon is close to the horizon, the light we see from it must travel through a greater thickness of the atmosphere, so the effects of scattering are increased. As red light is more resilient to scattering than green or blue, our view of the Moon is reddened. As it happens, the reddening effect is somewhat less pronounced at sites like Paranal, as the clear air ...

5 de Setembro de 2011: Na quinta-feira, dia 18 de agosto de 2011, o céu por cima do Observatório Público de Allgäu, no sudoeste da Baviera, Alemanha, estava fantástico, com a noite iluminada por dois fenómenos muito diferentes, sendo um, um exemplo da tecnologia avançada e o outro, o poder dramático da natureza.Na altura em que o ESO testava o novo sistema de estrela guia laser de Wendelstein, ao disparar um poderoso raio laser para a atmosfera, uma das tempestades fortes de verão da região aproximava-se - uma demonstração muito visual do porquê dos telescópios do ESO estarem instalados no Chile e não na Alemanha. Pesadas nuvens cinzentas lançavam relâmpagos enquanto Martin Kornmesser, artista gráfico a trabalhar no departamento de divulgação do ESO, tirava fotografias do teste do laser para o ESOcast 34. Por pura coincidência, esta fotografia foi tirada mesmo no momento em que um relâmpago aparecia, o que deu origem a esta espantosa ...

29 de Agosto de 2011: The first of twelve 7-metre diameter ALMA antennas has just been transported on 24 August 2011 to the 5000-metre-high Chajnantor plateau, where the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is under construction. ALMA is a giant radio telescope composed of an array of fifty 12-metre antennas, as well as a smaller array known as the Atacama Compact Array (ACA). This will have a total of four 12-metre antennas and the twelve 7-metre dishes. The four 12-metre ACA antennas have already been moved up to the high plateau, but this is the first of the smaller 7-metre dishes — which put the “compact” into Atacama Compact Array — to reach Chajnantor. It is seen in the centre of this photograph, surrounded by some of the other ALMA antennas. Penitentes ice formations are seen in the foreground.The larger 12-metre antennas of the main array cannot be placed closer than 15 metres apart as ...

22 de Agosto de 2011: ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, will be initially composed of 66 antennas, designed to observe the Universe in millimetre and submillimetre radiation. The main array will consist of fifty 12-metre antennas that can be spread over distances from 150 metres to 16 kilometres. In addition to the main array, ALMA will also have a compact array, composed of four 12-metre antennas plus twelve 7-metre antennas. By using the technique of interferometry, ALMA will work as a single giant telescope, enabling astronomers to observe the cold universe with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. From the high altitudes of the Andes, ALMA will provide a revolutionary contribution to the search for our cosmic origins. ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North ...

15 de Agosto de 2011: Just as the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so do the stars appear to slowly march across the sky. Their leisurely pace is imperceptible to a casual observer, but you can test the effect for yourself: on the next clear night note the position of a bright star, and then check again a few hours later. The change is not caused by the motion of the stars themselves, but rather the rotation of the Earth. Long-exposure photography is the ideal way to capture this motion. A camera is set up on a tripod, and the shutter opened to the sky. Normal snapshots gather light for a fraction of a second, but these special images need starlight to pour onto them for much longer, like a bucket collecting rainwater. To obtain this image, ESO Photo Ambassador Gianluca Lombardi collected light for a total of 25 minutes. ...

8 de Agosto de 2011: O céu nocturno por cima do Cerro Paranal, local de acolhimento do Very Large Telescope do ESO (VLT), é escuro e salpicado de estrelas brilhantes da Via Láctea, assim como de galáxias mais distantes. No entanto, é muito raro ver o chão contrastando com o céu de maneira tão marcada como nesta fotografia, que mostra uma fina camada de neve branca salpicada pelas zonas mais escuras do terreno do deserto.Esta fotografia foi tirada a semana passada, logo depois do nascer do Sol, pelo Embaixador Fotográfico do ESO, Yuri Beletsky, que trabalha como astrónomo no Observatório La Silla Paranal. Yuri capturou, não apenas a bonita paisagem com neve do Atacama e as cúpulas do VLT no cimo da montanha, mas também um incrível céu nocturno. À esquerda do VLT podemos ver o rasto de um satélite e à direita está o rasto de um meteoro.O Cerro Paranal é uma montanha de ...

1 de Agosto de 2011: The hazy and aptly named Fine Ring Nebula, shown here, is an unusual planetary nebula. Planetary nebulae form when some dying stars, having expanded into a red giant phase, expel a shell of gas as they evolve into white dwarfs. Most planetary nebulae are either spherical or elliptical in shape, or bipolar (featuring two symmetric lobes of material). But the Fine Ring Nebula — captured here by the ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera mounted on the New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile — looks like an almost perfect circular ring. Astronomers believe that some of these more unusually shaped planetary nebulae are formed when the progenitor star is actually a binary system. The interaction between the primary star and its orbiting companion shapes the ejected material. The stellar object at the centre of the Fine Ring Nebula is indeed thought to be a binary system, ...

25 de Julho de 2011: This unusual 360-degree panoramic projection reveals the observing site from a fresh perspective. In the centre of the image, staff at Paranal have gathered to watch the sunset. On the right, the enclosures of the VLT’s Unit Telescopes can be seen: vast machines, each with a primary mirror 8.2 metres across and weighing 23 tonnes. Also visible are several of the smaller 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes, which complement the Unit Telescopes. On the left of the picture is the control building, from where the telescopes are operated remotely during observations. No one remains inside the telescope domes after they are opened. Since first light in 1998 the Very Large Telescope has been used by ESO astronomers to study the Universe, including some of the most exotic phenomena known, such as exoplanets, supermassive black holes, and gamma-ray bursts. An amazing interactive virtual tour of Paranal is available here. Links Extended to 360x180 ...

18 de Julho de 2011: The MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla in Chile is a powerful instrument that can capture distant celestial objects, but it has been used here to image a heavenly body that is much closer to home: the Moon. The data used for this image were selected by Andy Strappazzon from Belgium, who participated in ESO’s Hidden Treasures 2010 astrophotography competition. Andy’s composition of the Moon was the fourth highest ranked entry in the competition. This image of the crescent Moon shows sunlight skimming across the heavily pocked surface, filling its craters with shadows. This is a fairly flat region of the Moon, but elsewhere, high mountains can be found, with some peaks reaching about 5000 metres. When backlit by the Sun, these mountains cast long shadows on the lunar surface. In the 1600s, Galileo Galilei used these long shadows to determine the height of the peaks. At the Moon’s poles ...

11 de Julho de 2011: Two galaxies, about 50 million light-years away, are locked in a galactic embrace — literally. The Seyfert galaxy NGC 1097, in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), is seen in this image taken with the VIMOS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). A comparatively tiny elliptical companion galaxy, NGC 1097A, is also visible in the top left. There is evidence that NGC 1097 and NGC 1097A have been interacting in the recent past. Although NGC 1097 seems to be wrapping its companion in its spiral arms, this is no gentle motherly giant. The larger galaxy also has four faint jets — too extended and faint to be seen in this image — that emerge from its centre, forming an X-shaped pattern, and which are the longest visible-wavelength jets of any known galaxy. The jets are thought to be the remnants of a dwarf galaxy that was disrupted and cannibalised ...

4 de Julho de 2011: ESO Photo Ambassador Gianluca Lombardi was in the perfect position to capture a crisp dusk view of Auxiliary Telescope (AT) 2, on Cerro Paranal. Once the Sun sets, the cloudless skies above the Chilean desert will be filled with stars, and AT2 will begin its work. In the background on the left is Cerro Armazones, with a road zigzagging to its peak, home of the future European Extremely Large Telescope. Site-testing equipment can be seen on the peak. The lower peak to the right of Cerro Armazones is the site of smaller telescopes operated by the Instituto de Astronomía of the Universidad Católica del Norte. There are four ATs on Cerro Paranal, which form part of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). They are used for a special technique called interferometry, which allows multiple ATs, or the even larger Unit Telescopes, to combine their power and see details up to 25 ...

27 de Junho de 2011: It’s one of the closest galaxies to Earth, but the Carina Dwarf Galaxy is so dim and diffuse that astronomers only discovered it in the 1970s. A companion galaxy of the Milky Way, this ball of stars shares features with both globular star clusters and much larger galaxies. Astronomers believe that dwarf spheroidal galaxies like the Carina Dwarf are very common in the Universe, but they are extremely difficult to observe. Their faintness and low star density mean that it is easy to simply see right through them. In this image, the Carina Dwarf appears as many faint stars scattered across most of the central part of the picture. It is hard to tell apart stars from the dwarf galaxy, foreground stars within the Milky Way and even faraway galaxies that poke through the gaps: the Carina Dwarf is a master of cosmic camouflage. The Carina Dwarf’s stars show an ...

20 de Junho de 2011: After nightfall on 15 June 2011 in Garching, near Munich, Germany, a blood-red Moon rose above the horizon. This striking phenomenon was caused by a total lunar eclipse in progress at moonrise, and it was captured in the skies over the European Southern Observatory’s Headquarters. A lunar eclipse takes place only when the Moon, Earth and Sun are exactly aligned. When the Moon passes through the shadow cast by the Earth, our planet blocks the path of direct sunlight to the lunar surface and a total eclipse occurs. This event can only happen on the night of a full Moon. Unlike the better known solar eclipses, the Moon doesn’t completely disappear from sight during a total lunar eclipse. Instead it appears painted blood red, giving it the ominous nickname of “blood Moon”. The reddish colour is caused by scattered sunlight that has passed through the Earth’s atmosphere — the same ...

13 de Junho de 2011: ESO Photo Ambassador Gianluca Lombardi used a remote shutter release and a 30-second exposure to take this night-time shot of himself sitting on a railing on the observing platform of the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). The VLT is on Cerro Paranal, at an altitude of 2600 metres in Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the driest regions on Earth. The viewing conditions at Paranal are so superb that on a clear moonless night it is possible to see shadows cast by the light of the Milky Way alone. In this photograph, however, the Moon is up, appearing as a bright light due to the long exposure. It is about to dip behind the VLT’s Unit Telescope 4 (UT4), named Yepun, and the shadows thrown by the moonlight are lengthening across the 200-metre width of the observing platform. The other three UTs stand in the background. From left to right they ...