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"Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler", Albert Einstein
Browsing All posts tagged under »Very Large Telescope«
VLT Observations of Gamma-ray Burst …
…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 […]
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 […]
A Spiral in Leo
August 10, 2011
This new picture from ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows NGC 3521, a spiral galaxy located about 35 million light years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). Spanning about 50 000 light-years, this spectacular object has a bright and compact nucleus, surrounded by richly detailed spiral structure. The most distinctive features of the bright […]
Dark Sky and White Desert…
August 8, 2011
…Snow pays a rare visit to ESO’s Paranal Observatory The night sky above Cerro Paranal, the home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), is dark and dotted with the bright stars of the Milky Way, and more distant galaxies. But it is very rare to see the ground contrasting with the sky as markedly as […]
Very Large Telescope Ready for Action
July 25, 2011
As the Sun sets in the north-western sky above the Chilean Atacama Desert, astronomical work is about to begin. This is home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope, one of the most powerful astronomical devices ever constructed. It is located atop Cerro Paranal, a 2600-metre high mountain some 120 kilometres south of the city of Antofagasta. […]
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 2, 2011
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