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Picture of the Week

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potw2607 — Picture of the Week
The Milky Way’s glistening band
16 February 2026: The setting of today’s Picture of the Week is ESO’s flagship facility: the Paranal Observatory, located in the Chilean Atacama Desert. One of the Auxiliary Telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope is still asleep, with its spherical dome closed. How bad, it misses this wonderful view of the Milky Way! In ancient times, people weren't too sure what the Milky Way was. They named it after its appearance — a milky band in the night sky. It was Galileo Galilei who first pointed a self-built small telescope at that structure. He realised that the Milky Way was formed of countless stars — a revolutionary discovery! Our understanding of the Milky Way has advanced considerably: some 100 to 400 billion stars of all ages, masses and colours belong to it. Located in a spiral arm, 25 000 light years away from the centre, is our Sun, making the Milky Way our ...
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potw2606 — Picture of the Week
The marvels of Paranal
9 February 2026: Today’s Picture of the Week shows the full scope of Paranal’s beauty. Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the mountain peak home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), is a site of many marvels. And this panoramic image taken by Chilean astrophotographer Alexis Trigo certainly captures them all. Right in front, one of the movable Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) stands tall. While this "relatively" small 1.8-m telescope has its eyes shut, its bigger siblings, the Unit Telescopes (UTs), each with an 8.2-m mirror, are scanning the sky. The lasers emerging from the UTs each create a bright artificial star on the sky, so the shifts and swirls of the atmosphere can be measured and corrected to deliver sharp data. The UT4 telescope, seen here to the right, had been equipped with four lasers for several years already. But in November 2025, when this image was taken, additional lasers were being tested ...
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potw2605 — Picture of the Week
The heart of the ELT
2 February 2026: Today's Picture of the Week gives an exclusive view into the heart of ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). While the exterior appears to be almost ready for action, work is ongoing inside to complete the telescope’s structure, illuminated here by the Sun shining through the open, gigantic doors. This structure is the heart of the ELT and will host the telescope’s mirrors, which will gather the light and send it to the instruments at the sides of the telescope. At the bottom part of the structure, the cell for the main mirror is visible. The tube above connects the main mirror structure with the top ring — the spider structure that holds the secondary mirror crown. Three additional mirrors will be hosted in a tower at the centre of the main mirror, not seen here. Once the light reaches one of the platforms at the side of the telescope, an ...
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potw2604 — Picture of the Week
Young or old? — There’s both
26 January 2026: Today’s Picture of the Week represents an unexpected full circle moment. The depicted object, known as Ve 7–27, was long believed to be a planetary nebula — the end phase of a sun-like star’s life. But ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has shown that it’s actually a still-forming baby star. For years the true nature of this nebula had been debated, but the VLT’s MUSE instrument has now captured the first detailed image of this object. It shows that Ve 7-27 is shooting energetic jets with knots or ‘bullets’ along them, which is typical for newborn stars. “Instead of being the “last breath” of a dying star, Ve 7-27 is a newborn one,“ says Janette Suherli, a PhD candidate at the University of Manitoba, Canada and first author of the study that revealed this surprising finding. But there’s an actual dead star lurking just nearby. The compact yellowish-green smudge to ...
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potw2603 — Picture of the Week
The precious rings of space
20 January 2026: Not all rings are forged in fantasy, my precious! For astronomers, they are found in space. The ones in today’s Picture of the Week are debris discs: the leftovers of planet formation around other stars. Even our Solar System has a debris disc, known as the Kuiper Belt, where numerous asteroids and comets encircle the Sun beyond Neptune’s orbit. It is believed that the influence of large planets like Neptune prevented the dust and pebbles in this region from clumping together and forming larger bodies. Therefore, debris discs can be seen as remnants of planetary formation, and studying those around other stars is key to understanding the birth of planetary systems. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a team of astronomers has obtained high-resolution images of 24 debris discs around other stars. The orange images in this Picture of the Week show the distribution of dust in these discs, ...
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potw2602 — Picture of the Week
"I was completely overwhelmed..."
12 January 2026: “ ...by the beauty of it all, to the point of forgetting everything around me,” says Julien Looten, a French astrophotographer. During his visit of ESO's Very Large Telescope in Cerro Paranal, Chile, he captured this extraordinary snapshot. Today’s Picture of the Week reveals the astonishing impression he gained of one of the world's darkest skies on Earth. This 360-degree panorama shows the Milky Way arching above an Auxiliary Telescope of the VLT, with the two Magellanic Clouds next to it. The faint green and red shimmer along the horizon is airglow, light naturally emitted by the atmosphere and only visible under very dark skies. Adding to the scene, one of the Unit Telescopes of the VLT projects laser beams into the sky to correct for blurring caused by atmospheric turbulence. To the left, the zodiacal light can also be seen, stretching like a white brush into the sky. “Coming ...
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potw2601 — Picture of the Week
Survey gives astronomers a latte to think about
5 January 2026: Creating a star is hard work, and the process is not very efficient. Current knowledge suggests that a stellar nursery must have a minimum density of gas and dust for a star to form. Only 1-2% of all the gas and dust in these clouds is utilised to ignite a star. But could even denser regions be more efficient at forming stars? In today's Picture of the Week, we’re looking at GAL316, one of the many stellar nurseries a team of astronomers observed to answer this question. This region is part of a survey called CAFFEINE – an astronomer’s best friend – carried out using the ArTéMiS camera at the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), a radio-telescope in the Chajnantor plateau. Now operated by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, this telescope captures the faint glow of cold gas clouds, seen here as a blue glow. This glow has been ...
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potw2552 — Picture of the Week
APEX: the beginning of a new chapter
29 December 2025: Today, instead of a picture, we feature a Video of the Week giving a glimpse into one of the highest altitude observatories on Earth: the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX). APEX is a telescope designed to explore cold, dark regions of our Universe, such as dense clouds of gas and cosmic dust where new stars are born. While visible light is obscured by the dust, these regions glow bright at the (sub)millimetre wavelengths that APEX observes. APEX allows astronomers, among other things, to study the chemical conditions within these clouds, detecting a variety of molecules in these dark, distant regions of our Universe. Water vapour in the atmosphere absorbs these wavelengths. That's the reason APEX is located on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile’s Atacama Desert at an altitude of 5100 m: one of the driest regions on Earth with few clouds. Once a joint project of the Max-Planck Institute for Radio ...
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potw2550 — Picture of the Week
Young stars blow bubbles?
19 December 2025: We know that a star’s childhood is turbulent: growing via a disc of gas and dust, the same disc from which planets form. Young stars also experience outbursts, expelling material via fast jets that regulate how much material is left to feed the young stars and form planets around it. Today’s Picture of the Week shows one of those jets interacting with the surrounding material. The background image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the young star SVS 13, located in the star-forming region NGC 1333 about 1000 light-years away. This star is expelling gas in the form of clumps known as “molecular bullets”. The insets show observations of one of those “bullets” taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. Each frame displays gas moving at different speeds, ranging from 35 km/s (red) to 97 km/s (blue). This series of images ...
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potw2549 — Picture of the Week
Endless expanse
8 December 2025: This view of the seemingly endless expanses of the Chilean Atacama Desert is definitely worth to be today’s Picture of the Week. The silver full Moon shines bright in the beautiful gradient evening sky. Below it, to the right, the giant dome of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) glows with the golden sunset light. The ELT is perched atop Cerro Armazones, at an altitude of 3046 m. The dome might look small in the image, but the full 30-minute walk via the set of stairs from the entrance of the dome to its top, indicates its gigantic size: 80 m high and 93 m wide. Weighing about 6100 tonnes, the dome is designed to protect the telescope and its mirrors, including the 39-m wide primary mirror — the biggest eye on the sky. To the left of Cerro Armazones the last sunbeams of the evening cast a dark triangular shadow: ...
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potw2548 — Picture of the Week
In preparation for the dark night
1 December 2025: Before the night emerges, ESO’s Paranal Observatory glows in the colourful light of the Chilean sunset. Today’s Picture of the Week was taken by French photographer Julien Looten, who captured the Very Large Telescope (VLT) right as the Sun set, creating a pinkish band — the Venus belt. The Venus belt, unlike the name suggests, is not related to the planet Venus. It is an atmospheric phenomenon caused by the scattering of the Sun’s light when it either rises or sets, visible on the opposite side of the sky. As sunlight reaches the far end of the atmosphere, small particles scatter it back towards the observer, creating a pinkish band. The dark band right below it is the shadow of the Earth cast on to the sky as the Sun sinks below the horizon on the opposite side. Looten caught this moment in a panorama right after sunset, before the ...
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potw2547 — Picture of the Week
A telescope fist bump in the sky
25 November 2025: Only by working together as a team can all of ESO’s 8 m telescopes become the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) — and today’s Picture of the Week captures this teamwork perfectly. The photograph, taken by Juan Beltrán, an instrumentation technician at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, marks the beginning of a new interferometry era. Most of the time these so-called Unit Telecopes (UTs) work as standalone telescopes, each one observing a different object. But they can also point at the same target, combining their light with interferometry to obtain the same level of detail of a huge 130 m virtual telescope. This requires measuring and correcting the effects of Earth’s atmosphere, which was previously done through bright reference stars, hard to find next to the object one wants to study. As part of the GRAVITY+ upgrade, new lasers were installed in the previously unequipped UTs. These lasers create artificial ...
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potw2546 — Picture of the Week
A hypnotising view of Paranal
17 November 2025: “I couldn't believe I was photographing a circumpolar startrail in Paranal; without a doubt, one of the most incredible experiences I've had as a photographer,” says Osvaldo Castillo, the Chilean astrophotographer responsible for this stunning Picture of the Week. This circular motion of the stars is caused by the rotation of the Earth around its axis. The point at which Earth's rotation axis extends to in the sky is called a celestial pole, which in today's image is the centre around which all these stars seem to move or trail — hence, the name circumpolar startrail. Osvaldo was able to capture this hypnotising motion at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. With the tip of one of the Auxiliary Telescopes almost perfectly aligning with the southern celestial pole, it seems as if the sky revolves around the telescope, making it the centre of attention. But capturing these circular startrails is no ...
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potw2545 — Picture of the Week
A dance of two pairs
10 November 2025: While the two largest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way — the Magellanic Clouds — shine upon the Chilean Desert, two Auxiliary Telescopes that feed light into ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) point up to the sky, unravelling the mysteries of the cosmos. In today’s Picture of the Week, French photographer Julien Looten wanted to capture the interplay of cosmic and technological pairs. The Magellanic Clouds are two dwarf galaxies that accompany our Milky Way through the cosmos. Indigenous cultures in the southern hemisphere often named them after water wells. At the same time the Auxiliary Telescopes are somewhat companions of the larger VLT’s Unit Telescopes, exploring the vastness of the universe. In the background we see the extremely faint but colourful airglow of Earth's atmosphere. All together this image shows the “immensity of the cosmos”, as Looten explains, in contrast to the human silhouette on the right side ...
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potw2544 — Picture of the Week
Open Sesame: The ELT doors move for the first time
3 November 2025: As the construction of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) continuously develops, its performance needs to be secured at every step. Today’s Picture of the Week is a timelapse of an important milestone: the first movement of one of the dome’s giant doors. The ELT dome and its doors guard the telescope from the harsh conditions of the Atacama Desert in Chile. Each of the doors will weigh approximately 650 tonnes once completed, including walkways, ducts for heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and other related mechanisms already installed. Moving these massive doors is no small feat, and the test shown in this timelapse, captured in early October, is key to ensuring that everything works as it should. Once both doors are fully installed and operational they will be closed, providing a more stable and controlled environment inside the dome for the upcoming construction phases. These include installing critical systems like the ...
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potw2543 — Picture of the Week
The magic of a pristine sky
27 October 2025: Today's Picture of the Week portrays the Milky Way arching over ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). Indulged in memories, the French astrophotographer Julien Looten, who capture this image, explains: “this picture has symbolic value for me, as it marked the closing of the night.” Three of the four VLT Unit Telescopes are centred under the Milky Way, while the fourth is hidden on the right side of the image. The smaller telescope in the background, to the right, is the VLT Survey Telescope (VST). The sky appears split in two: a greenish haze on the left side and a reddish one on the right. This so-called airglow is caused by chemical processes in the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere. Depending on the type of atoms or molecules excited, the glow can exhibit different colours. Airglow is extremely faint and only noticeable in the darkest regions on Earth, such as the ...
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potw2542 — Picture of the Week
A pink speckle in the southern sky
20 October 2025: Today’s Picture of the Week showcases the mesmerising dark sky above ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The sky in the southern hemisphere is home to unique jewels like the Magellanic Clouds and one particularly special eye-catcher in this image: the Carina Nebula. The Carina Nebula — a massive star-forming region — is visible here as a big pink spot right above one of the four Auxiliary Telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). This sight was a unique one for the French photographer Julien Looten, who captured the image. “It was an unforgettable moment,“ he said about finally seeing the Carina Nebula with his own eyes, as such a view is not possible from the northern hemisphere. But Paranal’s location in the southern hemisphere and its uniquely dark skies make it possible to capture this breathtaking view. This nebula is home to Eta Carinae, a pair of massive short-lived stars ...
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potw2541 — Picture of the Week
Black holes don’t suck, they get fed!
13 October 2025: Today’s Picture of the Week gives us a closer look at how black holes in the centre of galaxies feast. As some of you already know, the common belief that black holes simply suck in anything that comes near them, is wrong. Material can only fall into a black hole when it’s slowed down somehow — so what's pumping the brakes? To answer this question, a team of astronomers led by Wout Goesaert, now a PhD candidate at Leiden University, the Netherlands, mapped how molecular gas is distributed in the Circinus galaxy, about 13 million light-years away. The galaxy is shown in the top left corner in visible light. The two insets are images taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. Gas is streaming towards the black hole through two spiral arms that are embedded in the disc, seen in the innermost regions ...
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potw2540 — Picture of the Week
Under the giant's gaze
6 October 2025: Embedded in the vast expanses of the Chilean Atacama Desert and watched over by a mountain, we can see some antennas emerging from the desert. In this stunning Picture of the Week, the spotlight is on ALMA, a facility which is operated by ESO and its international partners. As its name suggests, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array does not work with visible light: it observes longer millimetre wavelengths that are invisible to the human eye. ALMA operates between infrared radiation and radio waves, enabling us to study cosmic sources that are cooler than stars. It lets us explore the cold side of the Universe, like clouds of gas and dust where stars form or planet-forming discs, but also the distant side, like far-away galaxies, where endless unanswered questions wait for us to be discovered. This image shows some of ALMA’s 66 antennas, which can be moved around and arranged in ...
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