VLT – Page 2 – आवारा मुसाफिर

Galaxies merger produces a spectacular cosmic dance

August 17, 2022433 Views

ESO telescope captures an event that started around a billion years ago ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has imaged the result of a spectacular cosmic collision — the galaxy NGC 7727. This giant was born from the merger of two galaxies, an event that started around a billion years ago. At its centre lies the closest pair of supermassive black holes ever found, two objects that are destined to coalesce into an even more massive black hole. Just as you may bump into someone on a busy street, galaxies too can bump into each other. But while galactic interactions are much more violent than a bump on a busy street, individual stars don’t generally collide since, compared to their sizes, the distances between them are very large. Rather, the galaxies dance around each other, with gravity ...

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ESO telescope captures surprising changes in Neptune’s temperatures

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

April 11, 2022783 Views

An international team of astronomers have used ground-based telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), to track Neptune’s atmospheric temperatures over a 17-year period. They found a surprising drop in Neptune’s global temperatures followed by a dramatic warming at its south pole. “This change was unexpected,” says Michael Roman, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Leicester, UK, and lead author of the study published today in The Planetary Science Journal. “Since we have been observing Neptune during its early southern summer, we expected temperatures to be slowly growing warmer, not colder.” This composite shows thermal images of Neptune taken between 2006 and 2020. The first three images (2006, 2009, 2018) were t...

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New planet detected around star closest to the Sun

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

February 12, 2022798 Views

A team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile have found evidence of another planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System. This candidate planet is the third detected in the system and the lightest yet discovered orbiting this star. At just a quarter of Earth’s mass, the planet is also one of the lightest exoplanets ever found. “The discovery shows that our closest stellar neighbour seems to be packed with interesting new worlds, within reach of further study and future exploration,” explains João Faria, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Portugal and lead author of the study published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Su...