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Picture of the Week 2015

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potw1552 — Picture of the Week
The ascent of man
28 December 2015: Modern science and the spectre of ancient man coexist in this thought-provoking image of a petroglyph near the site of ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. A petroglyph is an ancient stone engraving, examples of which can be found scattered across the globe. In some places they can date back as far as 40 000 BCE, but the one pictured here is much more recent. Upon the face of the stone, the images of men are depicted alongside llamas or other similar wild camelids. The native nomadic people of the Atacama Desert in Chile would have followed herds of these animals across the largely arid and inhospitable land before they adopted a sedentary culture, creating desert oases where they bred camelids. The pale glow of the stars over and beyond the mountain ridge and the silhouette of one of La Silla’s telescopes frame the passing of the centuries and the ...
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potw1550 — Picture of the Week
A planetary Nebula divided
14 December 2015: This fetching cloud of gas was imaged by the ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (EFOSC2) at ESO's La Silla Observatory. It can be found nestled in the busy constellation of Centaurus in the skies of the southern hemisphere. The cloud of gas — named NGC 3699 — is a planetary nebula, It is distinguished by an irregular mottled appearance and a dark rift, which roughly bisects it. These objects, despite the name, have nothing to do with planets and are created in the final stages of the evolution of stars similar in mass to the Sun. The name "planetary nebula" arises from the time of their discovery by William Herschel, when they appeared in the telescopes of the time as rounded objects similar in looks to the planets. Towards the end of their lives, stars like the Sun exhaust the supply of hydrogen in their cores, putting a stop ...
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potw1549 — Picture of the Week
A galactic view from the observation deck
7 December 2015: This stunning panorama shows the Milky Way galaxy arching above the platform of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal, Chile. At 2635 metres above sea level, Paranal Observatory is one of the very best astronomical observing sites in the world and is the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy. The extent of our galaxy's cloudy and dusty structure can be seen in remarkable detail as a dim glowing band across the observation deck. From Earth, we see the Milky Way as a band across the sky because from our vantage point in one of its spiral arms we are seeing its disc-shaped structure edge-on as we peer towards its centre. Our galaxy is surrounded by several smaller satellite galaxies. Prominent here, to the left, are the Small Magellanic Cloud and Large Magellanic Cloud — dwarf galaxies which are members of our Local Group of galaxies. The VLT consists ...
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potw1548 — Picture of the Week
Starbirth over ALMA
30 November 2015: In this wonderful high definition, singe-exposure image taken during the ESO Ultra HD Expedition, three deep sky objects seem to shine in front of the dish of one of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) high-precision antennas. The most striking feature is the reddish Carina Nebula, also known as NGC 3372. It is a large cloud of gas, mostly hydrogen, in which star formation has recently taken place. The short-lived massive blue stars forged within the nebula emit copious amounts of ultraviolet radiation, which then ionises the surrounding gas and causes the hydrogen atoms to glow with a characteristic red colour. Eventually supernova explosions and strong stellar winds from the most massive stars will disperse the gas of the Carina Nebula, leaving behind one or more clusters of stars. Two such star clusters, known as NGC 3532 and IC 2602, can be seen respectively to the top right and top ...
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potw1547 — Picture of the Week
Laser vision
23 November 2015: This image shows one of the four Unit Telescopes that make up ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal. Each of the 8.2-metre telescopes was given a name in the Mapuche language spoken by indigenous people from the Southern Chile. The Unit Telescope in this image is called Yepun, which means Venus. The smaller telescope beside Yepun is one of four Auxiliary Telescopes that have a diameter of 1.8 metres. These can be combined with the Unit Telescopes to make the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). Yepun is equipped with the Laser Guide Star Facility that is caught in action in this picture. The laser beam’s colour is precisely tuned to energise a layer of sodium atoms in the atmosphere which creates a small bright spot — an artificial star. This star can be used as a reference to work out how much the atmosphere is distorting the light from ...
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potw1546 — Picture of the Week
The Martian-like landscape of La Silla
16 November 2015: This panoramic image, taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Alexandre Santerne reveals a somewhat Martian-looking landscape. This dry, red scene could well be taken to be on another world, but is actually the site of the La Silla Observatory, 2400 metres above sea level, on the outskirts of the southern part of the Atacama Desert in Chile — and ESO’s first observing site. With more than 300 clear nights per year, low atmospheric turbulence and dry conditions, La Silla offers some of the very best conditions for ground-based observational astronomy. For many years it was one of the most scientifically productive observatories in the world, and today still makes a significant contribution each year. The main platform at La Silla, to the right in this image, hosts a huge range of telescopes with which astronomers can explore the Universe. The most striking is the ESO 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) with ...
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potw1545 — Picture of the Week
Infant star’s first steps
9 November 2015: The power of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveals two immense, rippled jets of dense gas with near-perfect symmetry emanating from a single source at the centre of this image. At their origin lies an extremely young star — called a protostar — that is beginning the long journey to becoming a star much like the Sun. The infant star, known as CARMA-7, and its jets are located approximately 1400 light-years from Earth within the Serpens South star cluster. This dense cluster, predictably found in the constellation of Serpens (The Serpent), is home to at least 30 more protostars that are sparking into existence in close proximity, providing astronomers with a perfect laboratory in which to study the interactions between stars and their environment. The first steps of a star’s life are still poorly understood, but astronomers concluded that these knotted, smoky jets are caused by periodic outbursts of ...
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potw1544 — Picture of the Week
Sunset panorama at La Silla
2 November 2015: This majestic panorama gives context to ESO’s La Silla Observatory. The site is positioned 2400 metres above sea level in the southern outskirts of Chile’s Atacama Desert. Far from the light pollution of civilisation it provides a clear view of the night sky for ESO’s telescopes. La Silla has been an ESO stronghold since the 1960s with only a selection of ESO’s telescopes visible in this image: The ESO 1-metre Schmidt telescope, the ESO 1-metre telescope and the ESO 1.52-metre telescope are seen further towards the back. La Silla also hosts many national telescopes such as the Danish 1.54-metre telescope on the far left and the silver dome protecting the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope. Fog is hovering over the valleys surrounding La Silla while the setting Sun leaves a layer of orange above the horizon. Once the Sun has disappeared the night sky will reveal impressive astronomical sights waiting to be ...
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potw1543 — Picture of the Week
Planet-hunting SPHERE images first circumbinary planet system with disc
26 October 2015: Observations by ESO’s planet-finding instrument, SPHERE, a high-contrast adaptive optics system installed on the third Unit Telescope of ESO’s Very Large Telescope, have revealed the edge-on disc of gas and dust present around the binary star system HD 106906AB. HD 106906AB is a double star located in the constellation of Crux (The Southern Cross). Astronomers had long suspected that this 13 million-year-old stellar duo was encircled by a debris disc, due to the system’s youth and characteristic radiation. However, this disc had remained unseen — until now! The system’s spectacular debris disc can be seen towards the lower left area of this image. It is surrounding both stars, hence its name of circumbinary disc. The stars themselves are hidden behind a mask which prevent their glare from blinding the instrument. These stars and the disc are also accompanied by an exoplanet, visible in the upper right, named HD 106906 b, ...
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potw1542 — Picture of the Week
SPHERE reveals spiral disc around nearby star
19 October 2015: ESO’s SPHERE, a planet-hunting instrument installed on the Very Large Telescope in Chile, has uncovered an unusual structure around a nearby adolescent star named HD 100453. HD 100453 lies over 350 light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur), and is engulfed by a swirling disc of gas and dust, visible in red and white in this image. Tantalisingly, two faint spiral arms can be seen extending from the disc, possibly formed due to the influence of as-yet-unseen planets lurking within. This spiral disc is uniquely symmetrical, and is one of the smallest spiral discs ever observed around another star — an impressive demonstration of SPHERE’s capabilities. SPHERE is a powerful planet finder, letting us directly image alien worlds, and the dusty discs in which they form around stars in the Milky Way. It does this by blocking out the dazzling light from the parent star, which would be ...
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potw1541 — Picture of the Week
Outbursts from a newborn star
12 October 2015: A pair of jets protrude outwards in near-perfect symmetry in this image of Herbig-Haro object (HH) 212, taken by ESO’s already decommissioned Infrared Spectrometer And Array Camera (ISAAC). The object lies in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter) in a dense molecular star-forming region, not far from the famous Horsehead Nebula. In regions like this, clouds of dust and gas collapse under the force of gravity, spinning faster and faster and becoming hotter and hotter until a young star ignites at the cloud’s centre. Any leftover material swirling around the newborn protostar comes together to form an accretion disc that will, under the right circumstances, eventually evolve to form the base material for the creation of planets, asteroids and comets. Although this process is still not fully understood, it is common that a protostar and its accretion disc, as seen here edge-on, are the cause of the jets in this ...
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potw1540 — Picture of the Week
A microlensing mystery
5 October 2015: This spectacular starry field of view shows the globular cluster NGC 6553 which is located approximately 19 000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius. In this field, astronomers discovered a mysterious microlensing event. Microlensing is a form of gravitational lensing in which the light from a background source is bent by the gravitational field of a foreground object, creating an amplified image of the background object. The object causing the microlensing in NGC 6553 bent the light of a red giant star in the background (marked with an arrow). If this object lies in the cluster — something the scientists believe might only have a 50/50 chance of being correct — the object could be a black hole with a mass twice that of the Sun, making it the first of its kind to be discovered in a globular cluster. It would also be the oldest known stellar-mass black ...
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potw1539 — Picture of the Week
Total lunar eclipse over ESO Headquarters
28 September 2015: On the morning of Monday 28 September 2015 a spectacular total lunar eclipse was witnessed across Africa, the Americas, Europe and the Middle East. In Germany, it was photographed by Mahdi Zamani above the ESO Headquarters Extension and Technical Building. In this time-lapse sequence the Moon was visible between thin layers of cloud. It appeared bright to the upper-left and faded dramatically as it entered the Earth’s shadow and moved lower in the early morning sky. A lunar eclipse takes place when the Moon, Earth and Sun are exactly aligned. When the Moon passes through the shadow cast by the Earth, our planet blocks the path of direct sunlight to the lunar surface and a total eclipse occurs. This event can only happen on the night of a full Moon. This morning's total lunar eclipse took place during a supermoon — a full Moon which occurs at the same time ...
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potw1538 — Picture of the Week
Keeping cool at La Silla
21 September 2015: This striking picture of the New Technology Telescope (NTT) was taken just after sunset at ESO's La Silla Observatory, located in the Norte Chico in outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert. The Moon has already begun its journey across the evening sky, and is shining brightly overhead. The Sun dips below the horizon to the left of the frame, soaking the clouds in a rich orange colour. The warm glow of the last rays of sunshine are caught by the reflective surface of the NTT walls. The purpose of this metallic dome is to stop the telescope’s enclosure from heating up during the day. This would affect the telescope’s observations, as rising warm air and turbulence blur images and worsen the astronomical seeing. It is not just the telescope's enclosure that is designed to reduce heat accumulation during the day; the concrete platforms and parking spaces around the site are ...
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potw1537a — Picture of the Week
A taste of ESPRESSO
14 September 2015: The huge diffraction grating at the heart of the ultra-precise ESPRESSO spectrograph — the next generation in exoplanet detection technology — is pictured undergoing testing in the cleanroom at ESO Headquarters in Garching bei München, Germany. Engineers at ESO have recently completed the difficult process of aligning the grating. The production and alignment of this component is one of the key ESO contributions to the ESPRESSO project. The grating is the largest ever assembled at ESO, and its length matches the largest echelle grating ever made — the 1.2 x 0.3 metre grating for the HIRES spectrograph at the Keck 10-metre telescope. After its final alignment, the grating is fixed in a permanent mount. All its components are made of Zerodur (the same material that is used for the mirrors of the VLT) and will require no further adjustments, ever. This mounting technique was pioneered at ESO, and demonstrated to ...
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potw1536 — Picture of the Week
SPHERE maps the surface of Ceres
7 September 2015: These images, taken two weeks apart, show the two hemispheres of Ceres and provide the best ground-based observations of the dwarf planet ever. They were taken using the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope and form part of an effort undertaken since mid-July 2015 to compose a polarimetric map of the object's surface. Orbiting in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, a region known as the Main Belt, Ceres was the first asteroid to be discovered in 1801 and is the largest Main Belt asteroid. It is the largest reservoir of water in Earth's neighbourhood. Most of this water is thought to exist in the form of water ice in the object's mantle. The surface of the dwarf planet is about the size of India and several intriguing bright spots can be seen in these new images. These mysterious bright patches have also been looked at more closely ...
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potw1535 — Picture of the Week
Aerial sunset over Paranal
31 August 2015: This remarkable image was taken using a quadcopter, hovering high above the Atacama. Ocean, cloud and desert come together to form the aerial scene, stretching out along the Chilean coast. ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) is softly illuminated by the Sun as it sets in the evening sky, throwing hues of orange and apricot across the observatory. On an adjacent peak towards the right of the frame, the 4.1-metre Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) stands apart, cutting a more solitary figure. The region in front of the VLT, filled with a lattice-like grid of rails, is used by the four small movable VLT Auxiliary Telescopes. Placing these telescopes at different distances apart adjusts the effective size of the VLT Interferometer, which acts as a single giant stargazer.
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potw1534 — Picture of the Week
Starry spin-up
24 August 2015: This image, taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Alexandre Santerne, is more than a little disorientating at first glance! Resembling an optical illusion or an abstract painting, the starry circles arc around the south celestial pole, seen overhead at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. Each circular streak represents an individual star, imaged over a long period of time to capture the motion of the stars across the sky caused by the Earth’s rotation. La Silla is based in the outskirts of Chile’s Atacama Desert at some 2400 metres above sea level, and offers perfect observing conditions for long-exposure shots like this; the site experiences over 300 clear nights a year! The site is host to many of ESO’s telescopes and to national projects run by the ESO Member States. Some of these telescopes can be seen towards the bottom of the image. The ESO 3.6-metre telescope stands tall on the ...
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potw1533 — Picture of the Week
A cosmic rainbow in Ultra HD
17 August 2015: In this panoramic image taken by Babak Tafreshi — a member of the ESO Ultra HD Expedition team — the ALMA Observatory’s antennas appear to take in the sight of the Milky Way, arching like a galactic rainbow of dust and stars over the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes. Located 5000 metres above sea level, the Chajnantor Plateau serves as an ideal hunting ground for ALMA. The array uses observations at the millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths to explore the coldest parts of the Universe. The superb aridness of the plateau means that far less submillimetre radiation is absorbed and attenuated by water vapour than would be the case closer to sea level. As ALMA seeks to capture the secrets of the Universe, Babak Tafreshi and his fellow team members seek to capture the beauty and grandeur of ESO’s observatories and their unusual surroundings. Comprising four celebrated astrophotographers and ESO ...
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