ESO

September 26, 2024
News Astronomy

ESO Unveils Most Detailed Map of the Milky Way

In mid-August 2010 ESO Photo Ambassador Yuri Beletsky snapped this amazing photo at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. A group of astronomers were observing the centre of the Milky Way using the laser guide star facility at Yepun, one of the four Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). Yepun’s laser beam crosses the majestic southern sky and creates an artificial star at an altitude of 90 km high in the Earth's mesosphere. The Laser Guide Star (LGS) is part of the VLT’s adaptive optics system and is used as a reference to correct the blurring effect of the atmosphere on images. The colour of the laser is precisely tuned to energise a layer of sodium atoms found in one of the upper layers of the atmosphere — one can recognise the familiar colour of sodium street lamps in the colour of the laser. This layer of sodium atoms is thought to be a leftover from meteorites entering the Earth’s atmosphere. When excited by the light from the laser, the atoms start glowing, forming a small bright spot that can be used as an artificial reference star for the adaptive optics. Using this technique, astronomers can obtain sharper observations. For example, when looking towards the centre of our Milky Way, researchers can better monitor the galactic core, where a central supermassive black hole, surrounded by closely orbiting stars, is swallowing gas and dust. The photo, which was chosen as Astronomy Picture of the Day for 6 September 2010 and Wikimedia Picture of the Year 2010, was taken with a wide-angle lens and covers about 180 degrees of the sky. This image is available as a mounted image in the ESOshop. #L

A 4000-hour ESO survey has helped astronomers to better study the Milky Way, creating the most detailed infrared map of our galaxy ever made

Matteo Ferrarini

September 12, 2024
News Astronomy

Granules Studied for the First Time on a Distant Star

Astronomers have captured a sequence of images of a star other than the Sun in enough detail to track the motion of bubbling gas on its surface. The images of the star, R Doradus, were obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a telescope co-owned by ESO, in July and August 2023. This panel shows three of these real images, taken with ALMA on 18 July, 27 July and 2 August 2023. The giant bubbles — 75 times the size of the Sun — seen on the star’s surface are the result of convection motions inside the star.

For the first time with such detail, thanks to ALMA, astronomers observe granules on a star different from the Sun and shed light on the future of our star

Matteo Ferrarini

April 16, 2024
News Missions Astronomy

Discovered The Most Massive Stellar Black Hole In Our Galaxy

Artist’s impression of the system with the most massive stellar black hole in our galaxy. Credits: ESO

Thanks to a collaboration between ESA's Gaia mission and ESO's VLT, astronomers have discovered the most massive stellar black hole in the Milky Way

Francesco Sebastiano Moro

March 27, 2024
News Astronomy

Unveiled Strong Magnetic Fields Spiraling At The Edge Of Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

A view of the Milky Way supermassive black hole Sagittarius A in polarised light. Credits: ESO

A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has uncovered strong magnetic fields spiraling from the edge of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A

Stefano Mossa

February 21, 2024
News Astronomy

AI Error Turns Out to be a Voracious Quasar

This artist’s impression shows the record-breaking quasar J059-4351, the bright core of a distant galaxy that is powered by a supermassive black hole. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, this quasar has been found to be the most luminous object known in the Universe to date. The supermassive black hole, seen here pulling in surrounding matter, has a mass 17 billion times that of the Sun and is growing in mass by the equivalent of another Sun per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole ever known.

When humans are still better than computers: how astronomers discovered the brightest quasar billions of light years from the Milky Way

Matteo Ferrarini

December 3, 2023
News Astronomy

HH 1177: a Massive Rising Star Outside the Milky Way

Artist's impression showing the HH 1177 system located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Credits: ESO

Thanks to the VLT's MUSE instrument and the ALMA radiotelescope array, astronomers managed to spot HH 1177, the first rising star outside the Milky Way