October 2011
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Faraway Eris is Pluto's Twin
Dwarf planet sized up accurately as it blocks light of faint star
26 October 2011
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Astronomers have accurately measured the diameter of the faraway dwarf planet Eris for the first time by catching it as it passed in front of a faint star. This event was seen at the end of 2010 by telescopes in Chile, including the Belgian TRAPPIST telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. The...
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NASA Says Comet Elenin Gone and Should Be...
Trajectory of comet Elenin. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech › Full image and captio
October 25, 2011
Comet Elenin is no more. Latest indications are this relatively small comet has broken into even smaller, even less significant, chunks of dust and ice. This trail of piffling particles will remain on the same path as the original comet, completing its unexceptional swing through the ...
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Close Encounters of the Galactic Kind
Astronomers have used a large survey to test a prediction that close encounters between galaxies can trigger the rapid growth of supermassive black holes. Key to this work was Chandra’s unique ability to pinpoint actively growing black holes through the X-rays they generate. The researchers looked at 562 pairs of galaxies ranging in distances from about 3 billion to 8 billion light...
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NASA Telescopes Help Solve Ancient Supernova...
This image combines data from four different space telescopes to create a multi-wavelength view of all that remains of the oldest documented example of a supernova, called RCW 86. › Full image and caption
October 24, 2011
PASADENA, Calif. — A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has...
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ESO - Portrait of an Imperfect but Beautiful...
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Not all spiral galaxies have to be picture-perfect to be striking. Messier 96, also known as NGC 3368, is a case in point: its core is displaced from the centre, its gas and dust are distributed asymmetrically and its spiral arms are ill-defined. But this portrait, taken with the FORS1 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shows that imperfection is beauty in Messier...
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Hubble Sizes up a Dwarf Galaxy
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The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken this image of the Phoenix Dwarf Galaxy, which is located 1.4 million light-years away from Earth. It is located in the constellation of Phoenix in the southern sky. The object, a dwarf irregular galaxy, features younger stars in its inner regions and older ones at its outskirts.
Dwarf galaxies are small galaxies composed of a...
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eso1141 — Photo Release - VISTA Finds New Globular...
and sees right through the heart of the Milky Way
19 October 2011
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Two newly discovered globular clusters have been added to the total of just 158 known globular clusters in our Milky Way. They were found in new images from ESO’s VISTA survey telescope as part of the Via Lactea (VVV) survey. This survey has also turned up the first star cluster that is far beyond the centre...
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ESO - Stars Dancing Above the VLT
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The night sky above the 2600-metre-high Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert in Chile is dark and clear. So clear, that very long sequences of photos can easily be taken without a single cloud obscuring the stars as they rotate around the southern celestial pole.
The site is home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) array. Its four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes dominate this...
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Hubble - Hubble Revisits an Old Friend
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Supernova SN 1987A, one of the brightest stellar explosions since the invention of the telescope more than 400 years ago, is no stranger to the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The observatory has been on the frontline of studies into this brilliant dying star since its launch in 1990, three years after the supernova exploded on 23 February 1987. This image of Hubble’s old...
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eso1138 Science Release - Distant Galaxies Reveal...
New VLT observations chart timeline of reionisation
12 October 2011
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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 the most...
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Zooniverse - So you think you know the Moon
10 October 2011
So after all the clicking on Moon Zoo you should know what the lunar surface looks like! But do you? Are you a true lunarphile? Like the Moon, Mercury is also rocky and heavily cratered. Can you spot the difference? Study the two pictures below and decide which shows lunar craters and which shows craters on Mercury. You can vote on the Moon Zoo forum. Voting ends Sunday 16...
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ESO - Flying above the ALMA Site: The Operations...
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This spectacular aerial view shows the ALMA Operations Support Facility (OSF), located 2900 metres above sea level in the foothills of the Chilean Andes, near San Pedro de Atacama.
ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is currently under construction on the 5000-metre-high Chajnantor plateau. Such a high altitude site is necessary for ALMA’s array of...
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Hubble - A Snapshot of Galactic Evolution
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Galaxies come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and these features change as they evolve. Some, like the galaxy in the centre of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, are beautiful spirals with graceful curved arms, while others are fuzzy oval-shaped blobs like the large object showing up near the bottom right of the frame. Others still are rather irregular in...
