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NGC 685
Starry spectacle
A galaxy ablaze with young stars is the subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. This galaxy is called NGC 685 and is situated about 64 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus (The River). NGC 685 is classified as a barred spiral because its...
SN 1987A
Ring-shaped nebula around SN 1987A
High resolution NTT image of supernova SN 1987A taken from La Silla Observatory in December 1993. Seven years after the explosion of SN 1987A, the observations indicate the beginning of a more active phase while the interaction between the stellar material which was ejected during the explosion...
Phoenix Dwarf
An explosive phoenix
This image shows a dwarf galaxy in the southern constellation of Phoenix named, for obvious reasons, the Phoenix Dwarf. The Phoenix Dwarf is unique in that it cannot be classified according to the usual scheme for dwarf galaxies; while its shape would label it as a spheroidal dwarf galaxy —...
NGC 4981
When stars explode
Over 75 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin) lies NGC 4981 — a spiral galaxy with a rather explosive past. NGC 4981 was discovered on 17 April 1784 by William Herschel, and subsequently documented in John Dreyer’s New General Catalogue. Over a century later, on...
R Aquarii
VLT view of binary system R Aquarii from 2012
This image reveals a dramatic binary star system named R Aquarii, located 700 light-years from Earth, as seen in 2012 by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). R Aquarii is a so-called “symbiotic binary”, comprising two stars surrounded by a large, dynamic cloud of gas (a nebula). Systems like this...
SDSS J102009.99+104002.7
MUSE spies accreting giant structure around a quasar
This Picture of the Week shows a huge cloud of gas around the distant quasar SDSS J102009.99+104002.7, taken by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory. Quasars are the luminous centres of active galaxies, which...
HD 141569
Boulevard of broken rings
This Picture of the Week illustrates the remarkable capabilities of SPHERE (the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument), a planet-hunting instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile: It shows a series of broken rings of dust around a nearby star....
NGC 3981
Digitized Sky Survey image around the spiral galaxy NGC 3981
This image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is approximately 2.4 x 2.0 degrees.
NGC 3699
A planetary Nebula divided
This fetching cloud of gas was imaged by the ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (EFOSC2) at ESO's La Silla Observatory. It can be found nestled in the busy constellation of Centaurus in the skies of the southern hemisphere. The cloud of gas — named NGC 3699 — is a planetary nebula, It is...
R Aquarii
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...
Cone Nebula
ESO’s 60th anniversary image: the Cone Nebula as seen by the VLT
The Cone Nebula is part of a star-forming region of space, NGC 2264, about 2500 light-years away. Its pillar-like appearance is a perfect example of the shapes that can develop in giant clouds of cold molecular gas and dust, known for creating new stars. This dramatic new view of the nebula was...
Digitized Sky Survey image around Apep
The image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2), and shows the region surrounding 2XMM J160050.7-514245, nicknamed “Apep”. The field of view is approximately 2.4 x 2.0 degrees.
Featured from the Archive
MACS J1206.2-0847
Gravitational Lens and Galaxy Cluster, MACS 1206
Four and a half billion light-years away in the constellation Virgo, scores of galaxies have been drawn together by the mutual gravitational pull. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has peered at this galaxy cluster and gravitational lens, known as MACS 1206. Gravity from the cluster's immense...
