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The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a 16-nation astronomical organization. It has an ambitious program to design and build powerful ground-based observing facilities at the cutting edge of astronomical research.

ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in the Atacama Desert region of Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor.

ESO La Silla is a 2400 m high mountain 600 km north of Santiago de Chile. The 3.5-metre New Technology Telescope was the first in the world to have a computer-controlled main mirror. Most current large telescopes now use the technology. Perhaps the best known is the 2600 m high Paranal site with the Very Large Telescope array (VLT) is situated about 130 km south of Antofagasta in Chile, 12 km inland from the Pacific coast in one of the driest areas in the world. The VLT is an array of four “Unit Telescopes”, each with a main mirror of 8.2 metres in diameter. Any one of these can see objects four billion times fainter than those seen with the naked eye.

This picture is a collage of ESO's telescopes and sites. I've never been to South America, but in these high dry mountains, the Milky Way is simply magnificent!

The Milky Way's ancient heart

A team of astronomers observed the center of the Milky Way in infrared light. Cosmic dust affects observations in visible light, but infrared is less affected. The clear skies of ESO's Paranal Observatory also gave the team a clear view.

It's ESO's image of the Thor's Helmet nebula.

The nebula, catalogued as NGC 2359, is in the constellation Canis Major (The Great Dog). The helmet-shaped nebula is around 15 000 light-years away from us, and over 30 light years across. It's actually a cosmic bubble, blown as the wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble's center sweeps through the surrounding molecular cloud.

Credit: ESO/B. Bailleul

This is a superb picture, but it doesn't show how the nebula got its name as well as this National Optical Astronomical Observatory (NOAO) image does. But I should mention that, in fact, Viking helmets did not have horns on them, even though that's the common notion of them.

Wow!

Here is the Carina Nebula as imaged by the Survey Telescope of ESO's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory.

The nebula is a stellar nursery in the southern constellation Carina (the Keel). Carina was once a part of the enormous constellation Argo Navis, which was the ship in which Jason sought the Golden Fleece. It was so big and unwieldy that Lacaille split the constellation into three new ones.

Credit: ESO. Acknowledgement: VPHAS+ Consortium/Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

NGC 1232 is a splendid spiral galaxy, and this image shows its central portion. The spiral arms - not shown here - contains lots of star-forming regions and are dominated by young blue stars. However the central region is dominated by older stars, giving it the orange hues.

NGC 1232 is located in the southern constellation Eridanus (the River) and is about 70 million light-years away.

Credit: ESO

Where Heaven and Earth Collide

ESO's La Silla Observatory, high in the Chilean Atacama Desert, houses some of the most advanced astronomical instruments in the world beneath a sky shimmering with stars. These stars belong to our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The roughly spherical halo component of our Galaxy, consisting mainly of older stars, appears in this image as the background of stars scattered across the sky. There is also a thin disc made up of younger stars, gas and dust. We see this as a dense, bright, and visually stunning band running almost vertically across the sky. Pockets of dust block out the light from stars behind, giving the band a mottled appearance.

Credit: ESO/B. Babek Tafreshi (twanight.org)

Here's another view of the spiral galaxy NGC 1232 It's about 70 million light years away in the southern constellation Eridanus. The colors show stars of different ages. In the central areas the stars are older and of a reddish color, but the spiral arms contain star-forming regions and their blue color is from hot young stars. There's also a small companion galaxy on the left.

Credit: ESO

It looks like a rose.

An All-Seeing Eye



Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. Kaufman