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#923524 10/04/17 02:33 PM
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The European Southern Observatory (ESO) was founded 55 years ago this week. It has some of the world's most powerful ground-based telescopes. In the picture, besides the amazing southern sky seen from a clear dark site, you can see one of the laser guide stars. These are used for what is called "adaptive optics". It allows the telescopes to stabilize the image which may be blurred by the atmosphere.

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The Orion Nebula and its young star cluster are captured by one of ESO's telescopes. The Orion Nebula is one of the closest stellar nurseries to us.

Credit: ESO/G. Beccari

The image was captured using a wide-field optical camers on ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST).

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Have a look at NGC 1964, a spectacular spiral galaxy about 70 million light years away in the constellation Lepus (the Hare).
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It has a bright and dense core. This core sits within a mottled oval disc, which is itself encircled by distinct spiral arms speckled with bright starry regions. The brilliant centre of the galaxy caught the eye of the astronomer William Herschel on the night of 20 November 1784, leading to the galaxy’s discovery and subsequent documentation in the New General Catalogue.

Several stars in our own galaxy, being comparatively nearby, light up the view. AND there are also more distant galaxies in the background. Their light is 40 million times fainter than the human eye can see.

Credit: ESO/Jean-Christophe Lambry

The image was captured by the Wide Field Imager (WFI) which mounted on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, Chile.

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Twinkle, twinkle little star(s)...

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Who can resist a photo of a stunning spiral galaxy? This beauty is NGC 1232, located about 100 million light years away in the constellation Eridanus (The River).
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The central areas contain older stars of reddish colour, while the spiral arms are populated by young, blue stars and many star-forming regions. Note the distorted companion galaxy on the left side, shaped like the greek letter "theta".

The image was captured using the VLT (Very Large Telescope).

Credit: ESO

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The region of sky known as NGC 2264 includes the sparkling blue baubles of the Christmas Tree star cluster and the Cone Nebula .

The data to make this color image came from filters on the Wide Field Imager at ESO's La Silla Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Credit: ESO

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Here's Messier 78, a reflection nebula in Orion. The blue color is characteristic of this type of nebula.

The image was captured using the Wide Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory, Chile.

Credit: ESO/Igor Chekalin

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one is as beautiful as the next one.

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Two of the brightest stars in the sky - sadly, only in the southern sky - are Alpha & Beta Centauri. In this image they were joined by a temporary companion Nova Centauri 2013, seen here at La Silla. Nova Centauri was a classical nova.
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Classical novae occur in binary star systems when hydrogen gas from the orbiting stellar partner is accreted onto the surface of the main star, causing a runaway thermonuclear event resulting in the brightening of the main star. In a classical novae the main star is not destroyed as is the case in a supernova. Instead, the star is dramatically brightened, and there is a simultaneous expansion of a debris shell.

Near the top of the picture is the Southern Cross and the Coal Sack Nebula. The latter is a dark nebula, visible by the way it blocks light from behind it. Beta Centauri is the higher of the two bright stars in the lower right, the other bright star being Alpha Centauri. The telescope in view is the 3.6-metre telescope which operates with the HARPS spectrograph for exoplanet hunting.

Credit: Yuri Beletsky

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Now here's something you don't see everyday, not even in the Atacama Desert. It's a total lunar eclipse at ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) site at Cerro Paranal on December 21, 2010.
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The reddish disc of the Moon is seen on the right of the image, while the Milky Way arches across the heavens. Another faint glow of light is also visible, surrounding the brilliant planet Venus in the bottom left corner of the picture. This phenomenon, known as zodiacal light, is produced by sunlight reflecting off dust in the plane of the planets. It is so faint that it’s normally obscured by moonlight or light pollution.

During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth’s shadow blocks direct sunlight from the Moon. The Moon is still visible, red in colour because only light rays at the red end of the spectrum are able to reach the Moon after being redirected through the Earth’s atmosphere (the blue and green light rays are scattered much more strongly).


Photo Credit: Yuri Beletsky

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