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The Galactic Beauty of Star Formation
I’d never seen galaxy images like this before. Nobody had! These images highlight star forming regions in nearby(ish) galaxies. There are still a number of unanswered questions surrounding how star...
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Images of 42 of the Biggest Asteroids in the Solar System
A huge team of astronomers have combined forces to use the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to provide the sharpest view ever of 42 of the largest objects in the...
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Astronomers Find 70 Planets Without Stars Floating Free in the Milky Way
The field of extrasolar planet studies continues to reveal some truly amazing things about our Universe. After decades of having just a handful of exoplanets available for study, astronomers are now...
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A New Image Reveals Orion’s Flame Nebula in Infrared
The ESO has released some stunning new images of Orion’s Flame Nebula. They’re from a few years ago but are newly processed as part of the Orion cloud complex study. The images have led to discoveries...
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Astronomers Measure the Layers of an Exoplanet's Atmosphere
The number of planets discovered beyond our Solar System has grown exponentially in the past twenty years, with 4,919 confirmed exoplanets (and another 8,493 awaiting confirmation)! Combined with...
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A THIRD Planet Found Orbiting Nearby Proxima Centauri
In August of 2016, astronomers with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced that they had discovered an exoplanet orbiting in neighboring Proxima Centauri. Based on Radial Velocity...
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Rare “Red Sprites” Seen From ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile
This new image taken of the skies above Chile’s Atacama Desert near the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) La Silla Observatory, shows bright red streaks in the sky known as red sprites. Red...
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A New View of the Cone Nebula From the Very Large Telescope
Here’s a dramatic and spectacular new view of the Cone Nebula, as seen by the Very Large Telescope (VLT). This nebula is part of a distant star-forming region called NGC 2264, which about 2,500...
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A New Instrument Gives the Very Large Telescope an Even Sharper View of the...
The Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Cerro Paranal in northern Chile, is undoubtedly one of the premier ground-based observatories. But a new infrared instrument recently installed on the telescope has...
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Need a Project? You can Build a Paper Model of the Extremely Large Telescope
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will be the world’s largest optical/near-infrared telescope. It is under construction on top of a mountain named Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert of northern...
View ArticleAstronomers Suspected There Should Be a Planet Here, and Then They Took a...
To date, astronomers have confirmed 5,272 exoplanets in 3,943 systems using a variety of detection methods. Of these, 1,834 are Neptune-like, 1,636 are gas giants (Jupiter-sized or larger), 1,602 are...
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The Next Generation of Telescopes Will Tell Us About the Weather on Other Worlds
The field of astronomy is about to be revolutionized, thanks to the introduction of Extremely Large Telescopes that rely on primary mirrors measuring 30 meters (or more) in diameter, adaptive optics...
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The Largest Explosion Ever Seen in the Universe
Throughout recorded history, humans have looked up at the night sky and witnessed the major astronomical events known as a “supernova.” The name, still used by astronomers, referred to the belief that...
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ESO is Using a New System to Allocate Telescope Time. It’s Working Well
Most astronomers know the struggle of getting time on the world’s most powerful telescopes. Even though this observing time might literally be the most important thing to their career prospects, there...
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A Feline in the Heavens: The Smiling Cat Nebula
A stellar nursery sounds like a placid place where baby stars go about their business undisturbed. But, of course, a stellar nursery is nothing like that. (Babies are noisy and cry a lot.) They’re...
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The Biggest Telescope in the World is Half Built
The European Southern Observatory continues to build the largest telescope in the world, the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Construction of the telescope began in 2014 with flattening the top of a...
View ArticleIs This The First Exoplanet Trojan, or the Result of an Epic Collision...
It seems like every week, researchers are finding more and more interesting exoplanets. Many of them have analogs in our own solar system – hot Jupiter or Super Earth are commonly used as...
View ArticleOne of Neptune's Dark Spots Finally Seen From Earth
There’s no getting around it: our Solar System’s gas giants all have big, conspicuous spots on their faces. These include Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, Saturn’s Great White Spot, Uranus’ Great Dark Spot,...
View ArticleA Bizarre Pulsar Switches Between Two Brightness Modes. Astronomers Finally...
Pulsars are the lighthouses of the universe. These rotating dead stars shoot twin jets of radiation from their poles, usually with a predictable rhythm. But sometimes pulsars behave strangely, and one...
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A New Planet-Hunting Instrument Has Been Installed on the Very Large Telescope
Exoplanet studies have come a long way in a short time! To date, 5,523 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,117 systems, with another 9,867 candidates awaiting confirmation. With all these planets...
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