View allAll Photos Tagged lasilla
Follow me on Flickr and...
www.instagram.com/sebastianvoltmer
The 50th Anniversary of ESO's La Silla Observatory culminated with a breathtaking and very clear Total Solar Eclipse.
For this image I used my Nikon D800 in a timed HDR mode at a native ISO 160 for a maximal dynamic range. In the whole time (108 sec) of the Eclipse I was able to capture 96 HDR frames (0.2, 0.3, 0.6 s) with my wide angle lens.
In a very long process I calibrated, aligned and stacked them all together with Photamatix and PS. In PixInsight I used different values of Larson-Sekanina masks revealing the streamers and the faint corona. Also stars became visible especially the red giant Betelgeuse which started dimming in the months after. For the different star brightnesses of the tiny star dots I used my action set RealStars; so I was able to show the brightness of Betelgeuse in comparision to Bellatrix and the other stars during daytime.
Order print:
www.tv-film.de/space-astronomie/real-stars-cs4/
Check our projects:
This 360° panorama was captured from the Atacama Desert in Chile, one of the most suitable places on Earth for astronomical observation, and more precisely from the European Observatory of "La Silla". Note that the dome in the foreground is the home of the TRAPPIST Telescope, which discovered the famous system of 7-earth-size exoplanets around a red-dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1!)
Anyway, this image not only shows the Milky Way spanning over the entire field of view but also an impressive amount of strange colorful wave-like structures in the whole sky!
This orange/red light emitted at 85 km altitude (and higher) does not originate from artificial light pollution or high altitude clouds.
This rare phenomenon called Airglow is entirely natural and originates from an interaction between the Ultra-violet light of our Sun and the particles of the upper layers of the atmosphere.
During the day, the highly energetic UV light of the sun hits the atoms of oxygen, sodium, nitrogen...etc of the Earth's atmosphere. This absorption of energy puts them in an excited state that only waits for an external process to be able to release this excess of energy.
Using Chemiluminescence, the atoms of the atmosphere are slowly releasing this absorbed UV-llight into visible light, before going back to their stable energy state.
The emission of light, whose color depends on the chemical element involved in the reaction (oxygen for red airglow, sodium for green airglow), continues even during night-time when the sun has set for few hours.
As a fluid, Airglow follows the air flow of the atmosphere and the variation of gravity field caused by the topography of the ground, which produces the so-called "gravity waves" (not gravitational waves!).
These gravity waves are what make the main spatial feature of airglow in the sky: wave-like and ripple-like structures, with strong inhomogeneities.
Red and orange airglow (even a little bit of green) were very strong during that night in Chile! Even though this natural phenomenon is very common in this region of the world, it is usually not as intense as it was during that night!
You can also spot the zodiacal light, a tilted cone of blue light starting from the lower horizon and extending to the galactic center.
This leads to a new definition of what a high-quality sky for stargazing really is: not a dark-sky but a sky under which the rarest and the dimmest natural phenomena can be seen, revealing the true colors of the sky!
The two photographers next to the TRAPPIST observatory are Norédine and Olivia, two astronomy social enthusiasts of our group of 8 which was chosen by ESO to participate to its #MeeESO event.
The other observatories visible in this image are (from right to left) : the Danish 0.5-meter telescope, the ESO-0.5-meter telescope, the ESO-1.52-meter telescope and finally the tiny illuminated dome in the top horizon is the huge ESO-3.6-meter telescope.
17 images were captured and stitched together to form this 360° panoramic view. Neither photo blending/digital art nor over-exaggerated colors/contrasts. The success of this panorama holds in the fact that I used an ultra wide angle lens : a Sigma 14 mm F/1.8 which enabled me to capture far less images and to spend far less time than if I had used a standard lens (35 mm focal length).
TECHNICAL DETAILS
📷 Canon 6D + Sigma Art 14 mm + Standard Tripod
→ Single 20 seconds exposure
→ ISO 6400
→ 14 mm
→ f/1.8
→ 17-image stitching to make this 360 panorama
→ No photo blending, each image of this panoram is a "one-shot".
Softwares: Dxo Optics pro 9 for noise reduction / Microsoft ICE for panorama / Photoshop/Lightroom for all the edits.
This image – combined of many exposures – captures 'totality' during the 2 July 2019 total solar eclipse, the moment that the Moon passes directly in front of the Sun from Earth's perspective, blocking out its light and allowing the Sun's extended atmosphere – the corona – to be seen. The processing of this image highlights the intricate detail of the corona, its structures shaped by the Sun's magnetic field. Some details of the lunar surface can also be seen. The image was created by the ESA-CESAR team observing the eclipse from ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, South America.
Credits: ESA/CESAR
Watching the sunset is an important ritual for an astronomer -- perhaps something primal, but more probably because the weather comes from the west, and those clouds willl dictate how the following night will go. Clouds aren't good, but they do make a sunset !
Deep Larson-Sekanina HDR of the Total Solar Eclipse (C3), July 2, 2019
La Silla Observatory, Chile
TS 86 SDQ APO + Canon 5Dll
Montage of images captured during the total solar eclispe on 2 July 2019, from ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, South America. The images show the progression of the eclipse as the Moon moves in front of the Sun from Earth's perspective and away again. The moment where the Moon is directly in front of the Sun (centre image) is known as totality.
Credits: ESA/CESAR/Wouter van Reeven
This wide-view of the Milky Way was taken in front of the ExtrA telescopes installed at La Silla Observatory, in Chile. This network of three 60-centimetre telescopes (whose only 2 of them are visible here) is owned by the Institute of Planetary Science and Astrophysics of Grenoble (IPAG) and aims to discover transiting exoplanets around M-dwarf stars in our galaxy. ExtrA means "Exoplanets in Transits and their Atmospheres" and studies planetary transits combining a joint photometric and spectroscopic novel technique...
I took this picture in July 2019, during the #MeetESO event. The night sky there was absolutely stunning and the brightest part of the Milky Way was just right above our head! This unforgettable astrophotography shooting was supervised by two professional international astrophotographers: Petr Horàlek and Mahdi Zamani! What a treat!
TECHNICAL DETAILS
📷 Canon 6D + Sigma Art 14 mm + Standard Tripod
→ Single 20 seconds exposure
→ ISO 6400
→ 14 mm
→ f/1.8
→ 2 stitched images (vertical panorama)
→ No photo blending
Softwares: Dxo Optics pro 9 for noise reduction / Microsoft ICE for panorama / Photoshop/Lightroom for all the edits.
Deep Larson-Sekanina HDR of the Total Solar Eclipse (C2),
July 2, 2019
La Silla Observatory, Chile
TS 86 SDQ APO + Canon 5Dll
This panoramic view of the Milky Way was taken from Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory ( CTIO) in Chile , June 2018.
I have long dreamt of capturing the night sky under this angle. This photo isn't a simple one for me since it is the result of more than 10 years dedicated to my passion. I love astronomy and particularly the technology used to study the wonders of our Universe. Each time I am thinking of astronomical observatories in my mind, I directly imagine this image : the milky way standing over them.
The feeling I had during that night was indescribable. The kind of moments where you have tears in your eyes.
It is currently one of the best wide field astronomical pictures I have taken so far.
The CTIO observatory is located in the heart of the Gabriela Mistral International Dark Sky Sanctuary in the Coquimbo Region.
📷Canon Rebel T5i + Sigma Art 18-35mm f/1.8 lens +Star Adventurer MINI (SAM)
→ single 30 seconds exposure
→ ISO 3200
→ 18 mm
→ f/1.8
→ 13 stitched images (panorama)
DxO Optics Pro + Lightroom editing
❤️ If you like my work, feel free to follow my Flickr account. More photos to come... #astroguigeek
🚀 I would be excited to capture the same view under the sky of the #AtacamaDesert from #VLT or #LaSilla European observatories of #ESO . A dream that could come true with #MeetESO 😍 in June-July 2019. #Chile2019 #TSE2019 #LaSillaTSE
#AstroChile #AURA #CTIO #Astronomy #Astrophotography #milky_way #milkyway #milkywaypanorama #voielactée #astrophotographie #ACEAP
Dans la constellation d'Orion, à 1 600 a.l. de la Terre, la nébuleuse par réflexion M 78 (NGC 2068) est la plus brillante du groupe de nébuleuses NGC 2064 et NGC 2067. C'est un nuage de poussière interstellaire réflexissant la lumière d'étoiles bleues, notamment HD 38563A et HD 38563B (cf. wikipédia).
Pour situer l'astre dans sa constellation :
www.flickr.com/photos/7208148@N02/48686300671/in/album-72...
In this spectacular image, taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek, we see the bright arc of the Milky Way stretching across the sky above ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. On the ground are the dome of ESO’s 3.6-metre optical telescope (on the right) and the silvery dish of the Swedish-ESO submillimetre telescope (on the left). Even though it was decommissioned in 2003 to make way for the more advanced APEX and ALMA instruments, the Swedish-ESO dish still seems to be gazing longingly at the sky, perhaps hoping for another chance to explore the mysteries of the heavens.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1834a/
Credit:
P. Horálek/ESO
A stunning night view, taken close to the 1.54m Danish Telescope and the 3.6m telescope on the road at La Silla, shows the Milky Way above the horizon, accompanied by the Magellanic Clouds.
ESO’s 3.6m Telescope, seen here atop a hill at the centre of the image, is home to HARPS, an instrument dedicated to the discovery of planets outside the Solar System via the radial velocity method. This method enables the detection of a planet by measuring the wobbling motion of the central star caused by the gravitational pull of the planet itself.
The towers on the left are the support structures of the BlackGEM telescopes, which had not been installed yet when this image was taken. BlackGEM is an array of telescopes that will search for the light emitted by the optical counterparts of the most powerful gravitational-wave sources, namely colliding neutron stars and black holes.
On the right of the image, we see the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two irregular dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way at a distance of approximately 160 000 and 200 000 light-years, respectively. In the Mapuche culture of south-central Chile, these neighbouring galaxies were known as lafken, labken or künchalabken (“the lagoons”) as well as rünanko (“the water wells”). [1]
The red filamentary emission stretching across the sky in the horizon is called airglow, which is light naturally emitted by atoms and molecules in the atmosphere through various physical and chemical processes. Despite showing up prominently in this image, airglow is invisible to the unaided eye.
[1] Source: Wenumapu. Astronomía y Cosmología Mapuche, Gabriel Pozo Menares & Margarita Canio Llanquinao
Credit: ESO/P. Horálek
High up in the Chilean Atacama Desert, pioneering feats of human engineering collide with the majestic beauty of the natural world. This image shows ESO’s La Silla Observatory, where domes housing some of the most advanced astronomical instruments in the world sit beneath a sky shimmering with stars.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1635a/
Credit:
ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org)
A spectacular lunar halo — known as a 22° halo — formed in the sky above ESO’s La Silla Observatory. The optical phenomenon is a result of moonlight interacting with millions of ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere, forming a ring with an apparent radius of approximately 22° around the moon. It is also known as the “moon ring” or “winter halo”.
While this is a beautiful sight, it creates conditions which are not optimal for astronomical observations. Clouds and the bright light of the moon affect the quality and accuracy of astronomical observations. However, that does not diminish the allure of this ethereal sight, and in fact some stars remain visible. Notably, Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, can be seen at the top edge of the image, just left of the centre.
Credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky (LCO)
Instagram: @sebastanvoltmer
This is my chrono photography of the Total Solar Eclipse taken from the ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile. I never saw such vivid colors in the atmosphere during a solar eclipse. The air was very dry and clear.
18 images taken with a Nikon D800, 24mm @ f/4 (ISO160)
Totality: 1/10 sec
Partial phases: 1/4000 sec with Baader AstroSolar OD5
More info in: Magical Universe. Visit: Flickr Astronomy Expo
Panoramic image of the Milky Way Galaxy at La Silla Observatory. A great view of the Magellanic clouds can also be seen to the left of the image. La Silla Observatory is European Southern Observatory's first observatory at Chile. At an elevation of 2,400m and far from any distinct sources of light poloution, the observatory is in the perfect location for astronomical observations and therefore houses the most telescopes of any ESO site at Chile.
Credit: A. Ghizzi Panizza / ESO
Join the Flickr Group Astro Imaging
This remarkable photo shows the ESO La Silla observatory in the foreground with the planets Venus and Jupiter low in the sky and the Milky Way drifting behind them. Yet it took Zdenek Bardon, the photographer, three nights to capture this stunning image; astrophotographers are subject to the whims of the weather and this photo was no exception. He had to wait three days for a crystal clear night with no clouds and low humidity to capture Venus, Jupiter and the Milky Way in all their glory.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw2005a/
Credit: ESO/Zdenek Bardon
The telescopes at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile are on a mission to observe and understand the vast Universe — but there are plenty of interesting natural phenomena far closer to home. One such example is this angelic 22-degree halo. This photo was taken high up in the remote Atacama Desert, but such a sight is visible year-round all over the world.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1945a/
Credit:
ESO/B. Tafreshi
This image captures the moment that a supermoon seemed to rest on top of the Chilean mountains, seen from 4.5 kilometres distance from the summit of La Silla. Although not terribly interesting from a scientific perspective, during this relatively rare event the Moon is a little closer to Earth, making its diameter appear about 10% larger in the sky.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1750a/
Credit:
ESO/I. Saviane
This stunning long-exposure photograph by ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek captures the hive of activity that is ESO’s La Silla Observatory, the distant glow of roads and settlements in the Chilean Atacama Desert, and the unmissable faint green radiance of airglow (produced by light in Earth’s upper atmosphere).
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1922a/
Credit:
P. Horálek/ESO
It looks like a tiny planet but this Picture of the Week actually captures ESO’s La Silla Observatory using a photography technique called stereographic projection, whereby a flat image is projected onto a sphere.
La Silla, home to several of the instruments in the ESO family, was inaugurated in 1969. As well as being the first ESO observatory, it has also been at the forefront of many scientific and technological firsts. ESO’s pioneering 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) was the first in the world to have a computer-controlled, or “active”, main mirror, leading the way for ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), where all four 8-meter mirrors are active.The High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument attached to the ESO 3.6-metre telescope is a hugely successful exoplanet hunter, discovering among other things the first ‘Earth-like’ planet in a star’s habitable zone.
Above “Planet La Silla” arches the pearlescent arm of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. It is the arid conditions of the Atacama Desert in Chile that allow such a view, as La Silla experiences over 300 cloudless nights per year.
Credit:
ESO/P. Horálek
In this Picture of the Week, taken by drone, you can see nearly all of the telescopes at ESO’s La Silla Observatory snaking along the top of the 2400-metre saddle-shaped mountain and into the distance. One for the La Silla family album!
La Silla is located on the outskirts of Chile’s Atacama Desert, far from human-made light pollution in an area famed for its dark, clear skies. It was ESO’s first observatory, inaugurated in 1969, and remains at the forefront of astronomy today, with around 300 scientific papers using observations from La Silla telescopes published every year.
The most prominent telescope in this image is the ESO 3.6-metre telescope, home to the world's foremost exoplanet hunting instrument: the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS. Thanks to the observations made with HARPS, astronomers have worked out that there are likely billions of rocky planets in the temperate zones around red dwarfs in the Milky Way, worlds that could potentially be home to life outside the Solar System.
Credit: R. Lucchesi/ESO
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 observed.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1544a/
Credit:
ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org)
This image shows the dome of the Danish 1.54-metre telescope that has been in operation at La Silla Observatory since 1979.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1512a/
Credit:
ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org)
ESO’s La Silla Observatory, situated in northern Chile, offers the resident telescopes unrivalled views of both the cosmos and the region’s barren, but beautiful landscape. Photographed by Alberto Ghizzi Panizza from the ramp leading to ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT), this view captures La Silla under the magnificence of the Milky Way, which unmistakably carves its way across the night sky overhead.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1836a/
Credit:
Alberto Ghizzi Panizza/ESO
Light travels to the telescopes at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Northern Chile over vast distances, from the planets and moons within the Solar System, and from the distant stars of the Milky Way and beyond. This spectacular Ultra High Definition panorama of the observatory, created by ESO Photo Ambassador Babak A. Tafreshi, captures light from a wide range of celestial objects.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1815a/
Credit:
ESO/B. Tafreshi
I took this picture in August this year while I was visiting #LCO observatory and #GMT construction site.
🇪🇺 La Silla is the first site of the European Southern Observatory to be built since it was officially established in 1964.
Although a lot of large telescopes are installed on this mountain, ESO is entirely responsible of operating 2 main telescopes: the ESO 3.6-meter #Telescope and the New Technology Telescope NTT .
La Silla is a pioneer in terms of optical engineering by designing and commissioning the first ever active and adaptive optics (AO) systems on a ground-based Telescope : the NTT . We all know what key roles play these technologies today in astronomy...
I have submitted my application to the #MeetESO which would enable me to visit the state-of-the-art observatories directed by ESO : #Paranal , La Silla, #ALMA and Cerro #Armazones for the #EELT .
During my stay in Chile this year, I only made tours of all the American observatories, therefore I would like to come back to ESO and know more about them (I'm French) and also watch the total solar eclipse. #TSE2019
If you know me, you may already know how I commit myself in projects related to astronomy. I am motivated as never before to share with you this unique experience 😀 Thanks for following me on Flickr!
Samyang 135 mm F/2.0 & Canon EOS6D on a staradventurer mini
300 x 15" @ ISO 3200
Made at La Silla Observatory in July 2019.
Acquisition details n Astrobin
If you cry because you´ve lost the sun, the tears won´t let you see the stars.
(Rabindranath Tagore)
There are many important observatories here in my region. if you want to know more about them just follow the links:
Professional observatories:
Observatorio Cerro Tololo
Gemini south observatory
www.gemini.edu/sciops/science-visitors-gemini
La Silla observatory
www.eso.org/public/chile/teles-instr/lasilla.html
Las Campanas observatory
Amateur observatories:
Cruz del sur observatory
www.observatoriocruzdelsur.cl/
Mamalluca Observatory
Collowara Observatory
Cancana Observatory
El Pangue observatory
www.observatoriodelpangue.com/eng/home.php
_____
© All rights reserved. Use without permission is illegal. Unauthorized use, copy, editing, reproduction, publication, duplication and distribution of my photos, or any portion of them, is not allowed.
Here we see a swirling starscape above ESO’s La Silla Observatory. A long series of individual images have been combined to form this striking shot, allowing the motion of the Earth to be captured as it rotates, with stars producing long trails around the sky’s south pole as it does so.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1452a/
Credit:
ESO/A.Santerne
Located on the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert, 600 km north of Santiago and at an altitude of 2400 metres, this seemingly tiny village in the middle of a desert is in fact ESO’s first observatory, the La Silla Observatory.
The many astronomical facilities hosted at La Silla include ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope and ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT), as well as several national telescopes, such as ExTrA or the Danish 1.54-metre telescope.
The 3.6-metre telescope started operations in 1977. It is home to the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), a powerful exoplanet hunter that discovered Proxima b — an Earth-mass rocky planet orbiting our closest neighbouring star after the Sun.
Inaugurated in 1989, the NTT constituted a major milestone in the field of active optics, a technique that adjusts the shape of a telescope’s mirror against distortions caused by the weight of the mirror itself. Using technology developed at ESO, the NTT was the first telescope in which such corrections were done in real-time during observations.
A village needs power, and La Silla’s photovoltaic plant delivers 1.7 MW using solar panels that stretch over 100 000 square metres in the desert. Thanks to this, all electricity used at the observatory during the day is renewable, preventing the emission of up to 400 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year. This is part of ESO’s wider efforts to reduce our environmental impact and operate our facilities in a more sustainable way.
Credit: ENEL
This image, taken at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, shows the Milky Way as it peeks above the horizon, with two of the observatory’s telescopes bracketing the starry, dusty band as it stretches across the sky.
To the right stands the domed enclosure of the ESO 3.6-metre telescope and its adjacent smaller sibling, the now-decommissioned Coudé Auxiliary Telescope. To the left is the receiver dish for the Swedish–ESO Submillimetre Telescope, also now decommissioned.
Stretching into the distance to the left, and nearly at the centre of the image, lie the other buildings and telescope enclosures hosted at La Silla, their outlines silhouetted against the glowing sky. Visible in the far distance are city lights which, although faint in absolute terms, can become noticeable over long exposures such as this one. The soft glow of light just to the left of centre, which gently curves through the sky, is called zodiacal light, and it’s sunlight scattered by dust particles in the plane of the Solar System.
Credit: ESO/P. Horálek
Looking at this photo might make you feel a little topsy-turvy! This Picture of the Week captures both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere at once — the whole night’s sky in one mind-bending image — something that would be impossible to see in real life.
To create this image, photographers Petr Horálek and Juan Carlos Casado took two pictures at observatories located at the same latitudes in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The top half is a photo taken at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias’ Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma in the Canary Islands, 29 degrees north of the equator, whilst the bottom half was taken at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, 29 degrees south of the equator. When digitally stitched together, they create a continuous sweeping view of the night’s sky.
One of the most noticeable features in this picture is the eerie white glow radiating out vertically from its centre. This is the zodiacal light, a phenomenon caused by dust that pervades our Solar System scattering sunlight, which is only visible in areas with extremely dark skies free from light pollution. Shining brightly in the beam of the Northern Hemisphere Zodiacal Light is the planet Venus.
The bottom image shows several of the telescopes at La Silla, including the ESO 1-metre Schmidt telescope in the foreground. The reflective mirror seen upside-down in the top image is part of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), a group of gamma-ray telescopes observing some of the most energetic phenomena in the universe. A second array will be installed in the southern hemisphere close to ESO’s Paranal Observatory, via an agreement between CTA Observatory and ESO.
Credit:
P. Horálek & J. C. Casado / ESO
A remarkable spiral galaxy in Hydra.
NGC 3621 is a spiral galaxy of morphological type SAd about 22 M light years away in the constellation of Hydra, The Sea Snake.
With an angular size of 10.96 x 4.79 m and visual magnitude of 10.1 this beutifull galaxy can be observed with a moderate-sized telescope about 3 degrees East of 3.5 magnitude star Xi Hydrae.
NGC 3621 is considered to a be a field spiral galaxy. A field galaxy is one that does not belong to a larger galaxy group or cluster. Roughly 80% of all galaxies located within 16 M light years of the Milky Way are in groups or clusters of galaxies.
NGC 3621 is also a pure-disc galaxy. Most of the spiral galaxies show a flat disc with spiral arms permeated by dark lanes of material, where young stars form, and a large group of old stars packed in a spheroidal region in it´s center. NGC 3621 lacks this central bulge.
Even in the absence of a substantial bulge, recent studies show that NGC 3621 has both an active nuclei that hosts a supermassive black hole and also nuclear star clusters with two low-mass black holes with masses few thousand times the mass of the sun.
The observational raw data used to create this portrait was obtained from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
The instrument used by ESO in February 2008 to take the data was the Wide Field Imager, a focal reducer-type camera permanently mounted at the Cassegrain focus of the 2.2-m MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile, with a field of view of 34'x33'.
The final cropped image is a combination of NB and RGB data. I processed 20 WFI MEF files created by ESO with different filters:
BB#B/123_ESO878 4 x 300s
BB#V/89_ESO843 4 x 300s
BB#RC/162_ESO844 4 x 300s
NB#HALPHA/7_ESO856 4 x 300s
NB#OIII/8_ESO859 4 x 300 s
IRAF with ESO WFI and MSCRED were used to first reduce the original data, then Pixinsght for linear and non linear processing and GIMP for retouching and color enhance.
Text and data sources:
Wikipedia
ESO
CDS Strasbourg
The arrival of daylight at ESO’s La Silla Observatory reveals the splendour of the Universe beyond our little planet in dazzling detail. The Milky Way stretches overhead as a streaming banner of dust backlit by the light of billions of stars. Clouds of interstellar dust grow thickest towards the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), which marks the centre of the galaxy — the core around which the spectacular spiral arms rotate. The Galactic Centre also houses a supermassive black hole that produces huge amounts of energy as it consumes its surroundings (Sagittarius A*).
ESO’s telescopes helped to characterise this monstrous black hole. An almost three-decade-long study used several of ESO’s flagship telescopes — including one of the Very Large Telescope’s 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (Yepun) situated at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, and the 3.5-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) at La Silla — to track the motions of stars orbiting the centre of the Milky Way. These observations revealed much about the region, including its distance from Earth, and indicated that it contained an object some four million times more massive than the Sun.
This is not the only incredible discovery to come out of La Silla. Telescopes at the observatory have provided proof that long gamma-ray bursts are linked to the ultimate explosion of massive stars, contributed to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe, and found a potentially habitable exoplanet around the nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri.
Credit:
P. Horálek/ESO
It is difficult for even the most seasoned astronomer to resist taking time out of a busy observing schedule to stop and stare up at the gloriously rich southern sky. This image is a self portrait taken by astronomer Alan Fitzsimmons, who took this photo between observing sessions at ESO’s La Silla Observatory.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1320a/
Credit:
ESO/A. Fitzsimmons
The magical green glow that dominates the sky in this Picture of the Week is airglow. You won’t be able to see it with the naked eye, but sensitive cameras can capture this faint light emitted by the Earth’s atmosphere, though only in the darkest of places. It reveals itself where there is little light pollution, like here at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, on the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert.
With its green colour, the airglow’s continuous presence in the sky is not to be confused with the dynamic, dancing auroras. Airglow is a chemical process triggered by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, which causes atoms in the upper atmosphere to emit very faint light. Auroras, on the other hand, are caused by charged particles catapulted into the Earth’s magnetic field. And while auroras are elusive and short-lived spectacles, airglow is more like quiet background music. The green glow here is caused by oxygen atoms, but it can also be red or yellow, depending on the type of atoms or molecules that cause them.
From left to right we can see ESO’s 3.6m telescope, ESO’s New Technology Telescope and the Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope. How about seeing them up close? Yes, you can actually visit them. There will be no airglow, as visits are during daytime to avoid interfering with the night-time work, and airglow is invisible to the naked eye –– but the telescopes more than make up for it.
Credit: J. Pérez/ESO
Dans la constellation du Sculpteur (Sculptor) à 6,5 millions d'a.l. de la Terre, la galaxie spirale NGC 300 a de jeunes étoiles bleues concentrées dans ses bras diagonaux en spirale. Les taches jaunes sont des gaz chauds chauffés par les radiations des jeunes étoiles bleues les plus proches. La galaxie est probablement en interaction avec sa voisine, la galaxie spirale magellanique NGC 55 à 1 million d'a.l. et pas vraiment membre du Groupe des galaxies du Sculpteur se trouvant à 13 millions d’a.l. (cf. site Hubble).
Pour voir l'astre dans sa constellation :
www.flickr.com/photos/7208148@N02/48894485827/in/datepost...
Swedish ESO Submillimeter Telescope SEST (15m) @LaSilla
The telescope was built in 1987 as a combined project between ESO and Onsala Space Observatory, with contributions from Finland and Australia. It was then the only large telescope for submillimetre astronomy in the southern hemisphere. It was decommissioned in 2003. The telescope was used for single-dish observations of a wide range of astronomical objects, especially the Galactic centre and the Magellanic Clouds and for interferometric observations at millimetre wavelengths. In 1995 observations made with SEST showed that the Boomerang Nebula is the coldest known location in the universe, with a temperature lower than the background radiation. (wikipedia)
This image shows the full extent of the La Silla Observatory. A multitude of telescopes are located here including the Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler telescope in the white dome at the front and the New Technology Telescope (NTT) whose octogonal housing can be spotted straight ahead. Except for dimly lit streets there is no light produced at the observatory to ensure minimal interference with observations.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/beletsky_lasilla_11/
Credit:
Y. Beletsky (LCO)/ESO