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PJ0116-24
Zooming in on a surprising ring
This Picture of the Week shows the distant galaxy PJ0116-24, a so-called Hyper Luminous Infrared Galaxy (HyLIRG). HyLIRGs are incredibly bright galaxies, lit up by the extremely rapid star formation within them. But what triggers this? Previous studies suggested that such extreme galaxies must...
RCW 106
How to find newborn stars
The glowing red clouds seen in this Picture of the Week show dense gas regions where new stars are being born in the RCW 106 region. But only 1% of this gas will actually go on to create stars, and astronomers don’t know why this percentage is so low. We do know that star formation takes place...
NGC 3312
The Hydra I cluster
This image shows a portion of the Hydra I galaxy cluster. Underneath the bright star taking the spotlight in the centre-left of the image, notice the spiral galaxy that looks almost smudged across the screen, spilling its contents into the cosmos around it. This is NGC 3312, a galaxy that is...
R Doradus
Wide-field view of the region of the sky around the R Doradus star
This wide-field view, created from Digitized Sky Survey 2 images, shows the region around R Doradus, the bright, orange star in the centre. The star’s surface was recently imaged in detail using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner.
NGC 3312
An astrophysical robbery
This Picture of the Week shows a snippet of the Hydra I cluster, which contains hundreds of galaxies. Each has its own quirks and history — but today, we focus on the story behind the leaky galaxy NGC 3312, which is the largest spiral galaxy known in the cluster. This spiral galaxy, right at...
Crab Nebula
25 Images to Celebrate NASA's Chandra 25th Anniversary
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of its launch, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is releasing 25 never-before-seen views of a wide range of cosmic objects.
ACO 1656
Coma Cluster (uncropped view)
The Dark Energy Camera captures an image of the dazzling Coma Cluster, named after the hair of Queen Berenice II of Egypt. Not only significant in Greek mythology, this collection of galaxies was also fundamental to the discovery of the existence of dark matter. The theory emerged in 1937 when...
ACO 1656
Coma Cluster
The Dark Energy Camera captures an image of the dazzling Coma Cluster, named after the hair of Queen Berenice II of Egypt. Not only significant in Greek mythology, this collection of galaxies was also fundamental to the discovery of the existence of dark matter. The theory emerged in 1937 when...
M82 X-2
Ultra-luminous X-ray Source with Magnetic Fields
In this illustration of an ultra-luminous X-ray source, two rivers of hot gas are pulled onto the surface of a neutron star. Strong magnetic fields, shown in green, may change the interaction of matter and light near neutron stars’ surface, increasing how bright they can become.
M82 X-2
Ultra-luminous X-ray Source
In this illustration of an ultra-luminous X-ray source, two rivers of hot gas are pulled onto the surface of a neutron star. Strong magnetic fields, may change the interaction of matter and light near neutron stars’ surface, increasing how bright they can become.
IC 3430
Galaxies in miniature
The Hubble Picture of the Week this week reveals the subtle glow of the galaxy named IC 3430, located 45 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. It is part of the Virgo cluster, a rich collection of galaxies both large and small, many of which are very similar in type to this...
PN K 3-46
A ‘Butterfly’ from Death’s Door
This ghostly, butterfly-shaped planetary nebula, captured with Gemini North, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, is known as Kohoutek 3-46. Kohoutek 3-46 derives its name from the prolific...
Featured from the Archive
Sagittarius A*
Peering Into The Heart of Darkness
The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
