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HOPS-315
Jets of silicon monoxide in the baby star HOPS-315
This image shows jets of silicon monoxide (SiO) blowing away from the baby star HOPS-315. The image was obtained with the with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. The blue jet is moving towards us, and the red one is moving away. Observations...
HOPS-315
ALMA image of HOPS-315, a still-forming planetary system
This is HOPS-315, a baby star where astronomers have observed evidence for the earliest stages of planet formation. The image was taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. Together with data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), these...
GN 04.32.8
The young stars of Taurus
The subject of this week's Hubble Picture of the Week is a reflection nebula, identified as GN 04.32.8. Reflection nebulae are clouds of dust in space that don't emit their own light, as other nebulae do. Instead, the light from nearby stars hits and scatters off their dust, lighting them up....
Abell 209
Portrait of a galaxy cluster
A massive, spacetime-warping cluster of galaxies is the setting of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. The galaxy cluster in question is Abell 209, which is located 2.8 billion light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). This Hubble image of Abell 209 shows...
Digging up a galactic time capsule
For this ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week, we gaze upon the field of stars that is NGC 1786. This object is a globular cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way Galaxy that is approximately 160 000 light-years away from Earth. NGC 1786 itself is in the...
3I/ATLAS
Deep VLT image of 3I/ATLAS, a new interstellar object
ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has obtained new images of 3I/ATLAS, an interstellar object discovered last week. Identified as a comet, 3I/ATLAS is only the third visitor from outside the Solar System ever found, after 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov. Its highly eccentric hyperbolic orbit, unlike...
MP Mus
You can’t judge a star by its protoplanetary disc
Today’s Picture of the Week tells a story of redemption for one lonely star. The young star MP Mus (PDS 66) was thought to be all alone in the Universe, surrounded by nothing but a featureless band of gas and dust called a protoplanetary disc. In most cases, the material inside a protoplanetary...
3I/ATLAS
Sequence of VLT images of 3I/ATLAS, a new interstellar object
ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has obtained new images of 3I/ATLAS, an interstellar object discovered last week. Identified as a comet, 3I/ATLAS is only the third visitor from outside the Solar System ever found, after 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov. Its highly eccentric hyperbolic orbit, unlike...
Cat's Paw Nebula
Cat's Paw (NIRCam Image)
To celebrate NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s third year of highly productive science, astronomers used the telescope to scratch beyond the surface of the Cat’s Paw Nebula (NGC 6334), a massive, local star-forming region. This area is of great interest to scientists, having been subject to...
Sombrero Galaxy
Sombrero Galaxy (NIRCam Image)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently imaged the Sombrero Galaxy with its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), which shows dust from the galaxy’s outer ring blocking stellar light from stars within the galaxy. In the central region of the galaxy, the roughly 2,000 globular clusters, or...
Bullet Cluster
Bullet Cluster (NIRCam Image)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured the central region of the Bullet Cluster with its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). The scene contains two massive galaxy clusters that sit on either side of the large, light blue spiral galaxy at the center. Webb’s extremely precise images revealed many...
Sombrero Galaxy
Sombrero Galaxy (NIRCam/MIRI)
The Sombrero galaxy is split diagonally in this image: near-infrared observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are at the top left, and mid-infrared observations from Webb are at the bottom right. The near-infrared image shows where dust from the outer ring blocks stellar light from...
Featured from the Archive
Large Magellanic Cloud
Dusty Space Cloud
Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light, this nearby dwarf galaxy looks like a fiery, circular explosion. Rather than fire, however, those ribbons are actually giant ripples of dust spanning tens or hundreds of light-years.
