For Halloween, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reveals this spooktacular image of a dark nebula that creates the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colourful cosmic backdrop. Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, it was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. This collage highlights some details within the huge Dark Wolf Nebula, such as the wolf’s “head”, seen here in the top-centre image. The pillars in the images to the right form when intense radiation from young stars encounters dense pockets of dust and gas. This radiation erodes and blows away the lighter material around these dense pockets, creating these pillar-like structures. Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team Found in the constellation Scorp...
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First segments of the world's largest telescope mirror shipped to Chile The construction of the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope (ESO's ELT) has reached an important milestone with the delivery to ESO and shipment to Chile of the first 18 segments of the telescope’s main mirror (M1). Once they arrive in Chile, the segments will be transported to the ELT Technical Facility, at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the country’s Atacama Desert, where they will be coated in preparation for their future installation on the telescope main structure. Unable to be physically made in one piece, M1 will consist of 798 individual segments arranged in a large hexagonal pattern, with an additional 133 being produced to facilitate the recoating of segments. Primary mirror, M1, se...
Read MoreA myriad of stars is revealed behind the faint orange glow of the Sh2-54 nebula in this new infrared image. Located in the constellation Serpens, this stunning stellar nursery has been captured in all its intricate detail using the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) based at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. When the ancients looked up at the night sky they saw random patterns in the stars. The Greeks, for instance, named one of these “constellations” Serpens, because of its resemblance to a snake. What they wouldn’t have been able to see is that at the tail end of this constellation there is a wealth of stunning astronomical objects. These include the Eagle, the Omega and the Sh2-54 nebulae; the last of these is revealed, in a new light, in this spectacular ...
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