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"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler", Albert Einstein
Browsing All posts tagged under »ESO«
Biggest Black Hole Blast Discovered
Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have discovered a quasar with the most energetic outflow ever seen, at least five times more powerful than any that have been observed to date. Quasars are extremely bright galactic centres powered by supermassive black holes. Many blast huge amounts of material out into their host galaxies, and […]
Serious Blow to Dark Matter Theories?
April 18, 2012
New study finds mysterious lack of dark matter in Sun’s neighbourhood The most accurate study so far of the motions of stars in the Milky Way has found no evidence for dark matter in a large volume around the Sun. According to widely accepted theories, the solar neighbourhood was expected to be filled with dark […]
The Feeding Habits of Teenage Galaxies
March 14, 2012
New observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope are making a major contribution to understanding the growth of adolescent galaxies. In the biggest survey of its kind astronomers have found that galaxies changed their eating habits during their teenage years – the period from about 3 to 5 billion years after the Big Bang. At […]
Inside Euler’s Head Or how to see a telescope through the walls of its dome
December 26, 2011
As night was falling over ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile on 20 December 2009, the sky was not yet dark enough for the telescopes to start observations. But conditions were perfect to perform a clever trick with the dome of the Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope: allowing us to peer inside with this photograph […]
VLT Observations of Gamma-ray Burst …
November 2, 2011
…Reveal Surprising Ingredients of Early Galaxies An international team of astronomers has used the brief but brilliant light of a distant gamma-ray burst as a probe to study the make-up of very distant galaxies. Surprisingly the new observations, made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope, have revealed two galaxies in the young Universe that are richer […]
Distant Galaxies Reveal The Clearing of the Cosmic Fog
October 12, 2011
New VLT observations chart timeline of reionisation Scientists have used ESO’s Very Large Telescope to probe the early Universe at several different times as it was becoming transparent to ultraviolet light. This brief but dramatic phase in cosmic history — known as reionisation — occurred around 13 billion years ago. By carefully studying some of […]
Feast your Eyes on the Fried Egg Nebula
September 28, 2011
Astronomers have used ESO’s Very Large Telescope to image a colossal star that belongs to one of the rarest classes of stars in the Universe, the yellow hypergiants. The new picture is the best ever taken of a star in this class and shows for the first time a huge dusty double shell surrounding the […]
Fifty New Exoplanets Discovered by HARPS
September 12, 2011
Astronomers using ESO’s world-leading exoplanet hunter HARPS have today announced a rich haul of more than 50 new exoplanets, including 16 super-Earths, one of which orbits at the edge of the habitable zone of its star. By studying the properties of all the HARPS planets found so far, the team has found that about 40% […]
Laser Meets Lightning
September 5, 2011
On Thursday 18 August, the sky above the Allgäu Public Observatory in southwestern Bavaria was an amazing sight, with the night lit up by two very different phenomena: one an example of advanced technology, and the other of nature’s dramatic power. As ESO tested the new Wendelstein laser guide star unit by shooting a powerful laser beam […]
The Star That Should Not Exist
August 31, 2011
A team of European astronomers has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to track down a star in the Milky Way that many thought was impossible. They discovered that this star is composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with only remarkably small amounts of other chemical elements in it. This intriguing composition places it […]
Mysterious Blob in the Ancient Universe Explained
August 17, 2011
Giant Space Blob Glows from Within VLT finds primordial cloud of hydrogen to be centrally powered Observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope have shed light on the power source of a rare vast cloud of glowing gas in the early Universe. The observations show for the first time that this giant “Lyman-alpha blob” — one […]
The Flames of Betelgeuse
June 23, 2011
New image reveals vast nebula around famous supergiant star Using the VISIR instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have imaged a complex and bright nebula around the supergiant star Betelgeuse in greater detail than ever before. This structure, which resembles flames emanating from the star, is formed as the behemoth sheds its material […]
Video: Pandora’s Cluster
June 22, 2011
The astronomy podcast exploring the cosmic frontier Galaxy clusters contain literally trillions of stars, and when these massive structures collide all manner of strange effects occur. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope and a number of other top quality detectors, astronomers have been studying the colliding galaxy cluster Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora’s Cluster because of the […]
November 28, 2012
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