Invisible object has two companion stars visible to the naked eye PR Image eso2007a Artist’s impression of the triple system with the closest black hole A team of astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other institutes has discovered a black hole lying just 1000 light-years from Earth. The black hole is closer to […]
Photo: ESO’s Very Large Telescope’s Sphere instrument obtain the sharpest images of a double asteroid as it flew by Earth on 25 May. The left-hand image shows SPHERE observations of Asteroid 1999 KW4, artist impression right. Image-ESO VLT observes a passing double asteroid hurtling by Earth at 44,000 MPH The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) […]
Astronomers have used observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to determine that star formation in the very distant galaxy MACS1149-JD1 started at an unexpectedly early stage, only 250 million years after the Big Bang. This discovery also represents the most distant oxygen ever detected in the Universe […]
Astronomers have used the ALMA and IRAM telescopes to make the first direct measurement of the temperature of the large dust grains in the outer parts of a planet-forming disc around a young star. By applying a novel technique to observations of an object nicknamed the Flying Saucer they find that the grains are much […]
The Pencil Nebula is pictured in a new image from ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. This peculiar cloud of glowing gas is part of a huge ring of wreckage left over after a supernova explosion that took place about 11 000 years ago. This detailed view was produced by the Wide Field Imager on […]
The Universe is a diverse place, and many stars are quite unlike the Sun. An international team has used the VLT to study what are known as O-type stars, which have very high temperature, mass and brightness. These stars have short and violent lives and play a key role in the evolution of galaxies.