Veckans bild

20 juli 2015: Here we see the now-obsolete Swedish–ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST), watching vigilantly over the horizon at ESO’s La Silla Observatory like a sentinel. Below, stratus clouds blanket the valley. SEST was installed at La Silla in 1987, and at the time of its first light was the only large submillimetre telescope operating in the southern hemisphere. Although it was decommissioned in 2003, the 15-metre diameter dish remains at La Silla Observatory and serves as a tribute to the groundbreaking work it accomplished — both as a standalone telescope, and also as a testbed for later projects such as the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). During its tenure, SEST made several big discoveries, including, in 1995, finding the Boomerang Nebula to be the coldest place in the Universe at just one degree above absolute zero, and discovering the first extragalactic silicon monoxide maser. This beautiful ...

13 juli 2015: Not all regions of Chile are as stark and barren as the ESO observing sites at Paranal, La Silla, and Chajnantor. ESO’s Santiago office, located in Vitacura, is sometimes visited by passing rainclouds and plays host to astronomers, technicians and administrative staff. Some 15 kilometres off in the background of this image, the beautiful snow-capped peaks of the Chilean Andes are visible. On a clear day the peaks can be viewed from almost anywhere in the city. They serve as a constant reminder of the natural boundaries of the busy city and its proximity to nature, should anyone require a break from the hustle and bustle of city life. Visitors to the area can take an easy hike in the Parque Natural Aguas de Ramón or fans of local flora and fauna may like to visit the Santuario de La Naturaleza El Arrayán (nature sanctuary), both located close to the ...

6 juli 2015: This image by ESO Photo Ambassador Alexandre Santerne shows the Swedish–ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) on the left, alongside the ESO 3.6-metre telescope on the right. In the background bright star trails circle the La Silla Observatory where the telescopes are situated, in the outskirts of the Atacama Desert in Chile. Star trails like these are created by using a long exposure to capture the apparent motion of the stars in the night sky as the Earth rotates. This image is a composite of 250 consecutive one-minute exposures, spanning four hours. A flipped version of the star trails is also visible as a reflection in the dish of the telescope. The reflection also includes the red lights of a car passing by. La Silla is ESO’s first observatory and has been a major ESO stronghold since the 1960s. SEST was, at the time of construction, the only large submillimetre telescope in ...

29 juni 2015: On 27 June 2015, the ESO Headquarters in Garching, Germany, opened its doors to the public as part of the Long Night of Science (Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften), along with the other facilities based at the science campus in Garching. ESO invited visitors to experience the work of this world-leading ground-based astronomy organisation at first hand with eighteen different activities to take part in. In the picture ESO astronomer Vinod Arumugam is making a comet out of dry ice. Before the doors had even opened at six in the evening people were waiting outside, eager to look around the Headquarters and take part in the activities within. In total, 3800 people attended the events and had the chance to have their questions answered by experienced astronomers; see live experiments; join guided tours through the new office and technical buildings; listen to talks about ongoing astronomical research; visit the exhibition LIGHT: ...

22 juni 2015: Illuminated by the stars of the Milky Way, the majestic fourth Unit Telescope (UT4) of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) sits atop Cerro Paranal, ready to observe the night sky. The Paranal Observatory, at an altitude of 2635 metres above sea level, is the world”s most advanced ground-based astronomical observatory and ESO’s flagship facility. UT4 — also known as Yepun (Venus) — has a main mirror 8.2 metres diameter, and is one of four Unit Telescopes that comprise the VLT. The others are known as Antu (Sun), Kueyen (Moon) and Melipal (Southern Cross). The names of the telescopes are words from the language of the Mapuche people who live some 500 kilometres south of Santiago de Chile. The four Unit Telescopes can work together to form the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). The VLTI allows astronomers to measure details up to 16 times finer than with the individual telescopes. ...

15 juni 2015: ESO’s Paranal Observatory is one of the best places on Earth to take in the night sky. This panorama of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) atop the platform of Chile’s Cerro Paranal was taken by Babak Tafreshi, one of the ESO Photo Ambassadors. A mix of colours sweeps across the sky in this image. From the fiery red sunset up to the dusty purple band of the Milky Way. Although the VLT site is one of the best places on Earth for astronomy, the telescope must still overcome the natural distortions caused by our atmosphere. This is done through a process known as adaptive optics. Astronomers can make use of an artificial star by shining a powerful laser — seen here projected from the telescope on the far right — to correct for the blurring caused by the atmosphere. The VLT, as a flagship facility for European astronomy, has opened ...

8 juni 2015: The Crab Nebula, which also goes by the names Messier 1, NGC 1952 and Taurus A, is one of the best studied astronomical objects in the sky. It is the remnant of a supernova explosion which was observed by Chinese astronomers in 1054. The tangled filaments visible in this image are the remains of the exploded star, which are still expanding outwards at about 1500 kilometres per second. Although not visible to the naked eye due to foreground filaments of helium and hydrogen the heart of the nebula hosts two faint stars. It is one of these that is responsible for the nebula that we see today — a star that is known as the Crab Pulsar, or CM Tau. This is the small, dense, corpse of the original star that caused the supernova. It is now only about 20 kilometres in diameter and rotates around its axis 30 times ...

1 juni 2015: The brilliant starry sky, the red sand and the ice structures piercing the foreground of this image combine to give the impression of a desert far from the reach of human footprints. A landscape that could easily be mistaken for the polar regions of our distant neighbour Mars. The jagged tooth-like formations are not on the Red Planet however, but on the sloping hills of the Atacama Desert. The formations are called penitentes — structures made of snow and ice that form mostly at high altitudes. The low pressure, moisture and temperature at these altitudes help to create this interesting and rare behaviour in the freezing of ice. The strange structures also have a tendency to orient themselves towards the Sun, which is why they are all perfectly aligned like a carefully tended garden of ice. As if this beautiful quirk of nature wasn’t enough, above the structures lies an ...

25 maj 2015: In this image, taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Yuri Beletsky, the control building at the Paranal Observatory can be seen below a rising Milky Way, like the proverbial pot of gold at the end of a celestial rainbow. This building is a hub for the observatory’s operations, and it is from here that the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the VLT interferometer (VLTI), the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) and VLT Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) are controlled and maintained. The team of astronomers, telescope and instrument operators, and engineers is on site 24 hours a day to to run these telescopes and to keep them in top condition. The control building is located on a “shelf” below the main observing platform at the top of the Paranal Mountain. All functions of the four Unit Telescopes (UTs), the four Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs), the two survey telescopes are controlled from their own ...

18 maj 2015: Shown here is the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), located high on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes, 5000 metres above sea level. The rocky edge visible in the foreground of the image is a mountain that looms above ALMA. It is here that the 1-metre pathfinder telescope, called MiniTAO, is situated. MiniTAO is part of the University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory (TAO) project which will later see the construction of a larger 6.5-metre infrared optimised telescope on the site. NAOJ, ESO and the other partners involved in ALMA selected this site because it is one of the highest and driest astronomical observatory sites on Earth. ALMA is comprised of 66 high-precision antennas spread over a distance of up to 16 kilometres. The antennas use a technique known as interferometry to combine their signals, enabling them to act as a single giant antenna. Signals from each of the antennas ...

11 maj 2015: This image shows ESO’s La Silla Observatory perched on the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert and cloaked in an iridescent sky. Deep reddish hues permeate the right side of the frame and give way to the Milky Way, which can be seen with stunning clarity from La Silla, a location boasting some of the darkest and clearest night skies on Earth. The red and greenish-yellow glow is caused by airglow — a glow caused by the Earth’s atmosphere that is usually only seen from space, or at very dark locations. Hogging the limelight in this frame is the silver dish in the foreground — the Swedish–ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST). Although it was decommissioned in 2003 and is no longer in service SEST still provides a picturesque target for keen photographers as it reflects the bright lights and colours of the skies above. In the background of the image is ...

4 maj 2015: Rather than showing spectacular objects, some of the most surprising images of the Universe instead focus on emptiness. This new image from the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope shows dark tentacles swirling outwards from a dark, blank spot of space in the centre of the frame, particularly conspicuous against the dense peppering of bright gold and red stars across the rest of the image. This region is not a hole in the cosmos, or an empty patch of sky. The dark lanes are actually made up of thick, opaque dust lying between us and the packed star field behind it. This obscuring dust forms part of a dark molecular cloud, cold and dense areas where large quantities of dust and molecular gas mingle and block the visible light emitted by more distant stars. It is still unclear how these clouds form, but they are thought to be the very early stages of ...

27 april 2015: In this new image dusk reveals a stunning night sky over ESO’s Paranal Observatory, home to the Very Large Telescope (VLT) — the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy. As the Sun sets on the site the Milky Way is shown in magnificent detail. Although it appears to the naked eye as a clouded haze across the sky, the Milky Way consists of 100–400 billion individual stars strung out along its 100 000 light-year extent. In this image the Milky Way is a backdrop to the Unit Telescope number 4, also known as Yepun. Yepun is Venus in the Mapuche language, the language of the indigenous people from the south of Chile. Yepun is one of four 8.2-metre telescopes that can be used together as one giant telescope, allowing astronomers to detect details up to 16 times finer than would be possible with the individual telescopes. Together, the VLT has ...

20 april 2015: In this romantic scene a bright, crimson sunset complements the colourful centre of the Milky Way and the zodiacal light above the platform of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal. The pink regions scattered across the disc of our galaxy are regions where new stars are being born. On average the disc is about 1000 light-years tall and about 100 000 light-years in diameter. The setting Sun is just one of over 400 billion stars found in the Milky Way. Captured in this image is one of the Unit Telescopes (UTs, here UT1 also known as Antu) and three of the four Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) which form part of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). To the left of the UT is a very faint meteor, and the red supergiant star Antares stands out above the ATs. Antares is found at the heart of the constellation of Scorpius ...

13 april 2015: At the end of the long, winding road in this image is the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)’s Operational Support Facility (OSF). The OSF serves as a base camp for contractors and staff working at ALMA and its facilities are the centre of all scientific activities related to ALMA’s daily operation. Beyond the ALMA camp the white salt flat known as El Salar de Atacama is visible, the largest salt flat in Chile. Towards the horizon is the mountain known as Cerro Quimal, the highest mountain of the Cordillera de Domeyko, and nearby lies Pukará de Quitor (Fort of Quitor) — a pre-Columbian archaeological site. This photograph was taken from 4660 metres above sea level by photographer José Velásquez during a Sunday trek from Cerro de Macón towards the Array Operations Site (AOS). ALMA is the largest astronomical project in existence and is a truly global partnership between Europe, North ...

6 april 2015: This photo, courtesy of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), shows one of the 66 antennas which form the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), located on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes. Above the antennas, stars appear to rain down on the site. The downpour of stars is the result of a long exposure capturing their trail across the sky as the Earth rotates. The plateau on which ALMA is located was actually chosen in part due to its dryness. Radio waves can easily penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere, but moisture in the air absorbs them and degrades the quality of the observations. So just as well that this is not real rain! ALMA is an international partnership between Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile.

30 mars 2015: With all 66 of their backs turned to the constellation of Orion, the antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) sit high on their perch on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes. Illustrating nicely why this spot was chosen for the array is an impressively clear view of the Orion Nebula — otherwise known as Messier 42. It lies in the centre of the image, with the dazzling red of the star Betelgeuse, otherwise known as Alpha Orionis, off to the right. These are two of the most impressive sights in the night sky. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant and notable for being a likely candidate amongst the stars in our galaxy to become a supernova in the near future. Near future on a cosmic scale — a recent report suggests in around 100 000 years, which is a mere galactic blink. When this does happen, it will ...

23 mars 2015: This image shows the dome of the Danish 1.54-metre telescope that has been in operation at La Silla Observatory since 1979. The telescope has been involved in several breakthrough astronomical observations including the discovery of merging neutron stars as the possible origin of gamma-ray bursts (eso0533) and finding an exoplanet only five times more massive than the Earth (eso0603). Above the telescope, our home galaxy the Milky Way stretches across the sky with the bright central bulge aligned with the dome of the telescope. In the background to the right you can spot the dome which once held the MarLy 1-metre telescope.. The telescope saw first light in 1996 and was decommissioned in 2009. Before the MarLy, this dome hosted the 40-centimetre Grand Prisme Objectif, a photographic astrograph. In front of the MarLy dome, the enclosure of the small Marseille 0.36-metre telecope is visible. Links Babak’s image archive at ESO ...

16 mars 2015: This beautiful image taken at ESO's Paranal Observatory shows the four Auxiliary Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) Array, set against an incredibly starry backdrop on Cerro Paranal in Chile. The Auxiliary Telescopes are each 1.8 metres in diameter and work with the four 8.2-metre diameter Unit Telescopes to make up the world's most advanced optical observatory. The telescopes work together to form the VLT Interferometer (VLTI), a giant interferometer which allows astronomers to see details up to 25 times finer than would be possible with the individual Unit Telescopes. Hanging over the site are the prominent Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, visible only in the southern sky. These two irregular dwarf galaxies are in the Local Group and so are companion galaxies to our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The image was taken by our Flickr friend John Colosimo who submitted it to the Your ESO Pictures Flickr ...

9 mars 2015: Resembling a cross between the Bespin Cloud City and the ice planet Hoth from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, here we see ESO’s La Silla Observatory blanketed in snow as the Sun sets. The characteristic domes of the La Silla telescopes are closed off to protect the instruments from the harsh environment and icy weather. Amongst the plethora of white, the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope is particularly distinctive due to its silver dome. On a normal night, as darkness falls, the telescope domes will open and begin their nightly routine of observing the cosmos. Despite being located in a very dry area of the world, La Silla does occasionally experience some precipitation in the form of snow and a spattering of rain, as seen in this chilly picture taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Malte Tewes. However, although it does get cold in the Atacama Desert, where La Silla is located ...