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Chamaeleon
The Ominous Chamaeleon I Dark Cloud
The ominous Chamaeleon I dark cloud, the nearest star-forming region to Earth, is captured in this image taken with the 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo...
IC 758
Stirring the interstellar soup
This serene spiral galaxy hides a cataclysmic past. The galaxy IC 758, shown here in today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week, is situated 60 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. In this Hubble image captured in 2023, IC 758 appears peaceful, its soft...
RIK 113
Caution: Planets under construction
Astronomers may have caught a still-forming planet on camera, hidden somewhere in this stellar snapshot. Today’s Picture of the Week is a close-up of the star RIK 113, seen here surrounded by a cloud of gas and dust called a protoplanetary disc. These discs are a common feature around young...
NGC 685
Starry spectacle
A galaxy ablaze with young stars is the subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. This galaxy is called NGC 685 and is situated about 64 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus (The River). NGC 685 is classified as a barred spiral because its...
SN 1987A
Ring-shaped nebula around SN 1987A
High resolution NTT image of supernova SN 1987A taken from La Silla Observatory in December 1993. Seven years after the explosion of SN 1987A, the observations indicate the beginning of a more active phase while the interaction between the stellar material which was ejected during the explosion...
Phoenix Dwarf
An explosive phoenix
This image shows a dwarf galaxy in the southern constellation of Phoenix named, for obvious reasons, the Phoenix Dwarf. The Phoenix Dwarf is unique in that it cannot be classified according to the usual scheme for dwarf galaxies; while its shape would label it as a spheroidal dwarf galaxy —...
NGC 4981
When stars explode
Over 75 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin) lies NGC 4981 — a spiral galaxy with a rather explosive past. NGC 4981 was discovered on 17 April 1784 by William Herschel, and subsequently documented in John Dreyer’s New General Catalogue. Over a century later, on...
R Aquarii
VLT view of binary system R Aquarii from 2012
This image reveals a dramatic binary star system named R Aquarii, located 700 light-years from Earth, as seen in 2012 by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). R Aquarii is a so-called “symbiotic binary”, comprising two stars surrounded by a large, dynamic cloud of gas (a nebula). Systems like this...
SDSS J102009.99+104002.7
MUSE spies accreting giant structure around a quasar
This Picture of the Week shows a huge cloud of gas around the distant quasar SDSS J102009.99+104002.7, taken by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory. Quasars are the luminous centres of active galaxies, which...
HD 141569
Boulevard of broken rings
This Picture of the Week illustrates the remarkable capabilities of SPHERE (the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument), a planet-hunting instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile: It shows a series of broken rings of dust around a nearby star....
NGC 3981
Digitized Sky Survey image around the spiral galaxy NGC 3981
This image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is approximately 2.4 x 2.0 degrees.
NGC 3699
A planetary Nebula divided
This fetching cloud of gas was imaged by the ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (EFOSC2) at ESO's La Silla Observatory. It can be found nestled in the busy constellation of Centaurus in the skies of the southern hemisphere. The cloud of gas — named NGC 3699 — is a planetary nebula, It is...
Featured from the Archive
Hubble's 100
unknown
The Hubble Space Telescope achieved its 100,000th exposure June 22 with a snapshot of a quasar that is about 9 billion light-years from Earth. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 clicked this image of the quasar, the bright object in the center of the photo. The fainter object just above it...
