How SPHERE Helps Protect Earth from Dangerous Asteroids
The unique capabilities of the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have enabled it to obtain the sharpest images of a double asteroid as…
European Southern Observatory
ESO’s SPECULOOS Planet-Hunting Machine Views NGC 6902
This Picture of the Week is a special treat: a first-light image from the newest resident of ESO’s Paranal Observatory, the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory. This…
ESO Captures Dazzling Image of Newly-Forming Stars in the LMC
This dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument (MUSE) on ESO’s Very…
ESO’s Very Large Telescope Captures a Fleeting Moment in Time
The faint, ephemeral glow emanating from the planetary nebula ESO 577-24 persists for only a short time — around 10,000 years, a blink of an…
Enjoy a Stellar Walk Through the Universe – Chile Chill 12 Fire in the Heavens
Before the scientific discoveries made using ESO telescopes can find themselves on your screen, they pass through the expert hands of talented visual artists and…
Astronomers Capture Dramatic Details of Turbulent Stellar Relationship
While testing a new subsystem on the SPHERE planet-hunting instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers were able to capture dramatic details of the turbulent…
SPECULOOS Project Makes Its First Observations
The SPECULOOS Southern Observatory (SSO) has been successfully installed at the Paranal Observatory and has obtained its first engineering and calibration images — a process…
ESO Captures Stunning Image of a Newly Discovered Triple Star System
The VISIR instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope has captured this stunning image of a newly discovered massive triple star system. Nicknamed Apep after an…
Astronomers Discover Super-Earth Orbiting Barnard’s Star
The nearest single star to the Sun hosts an exoplanet at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth — a so-called super-Earth. One of the…
Stunning Exoplanet Beta Pictoris B Time-Lapse Images
ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has captured an unprecedented series of images showing the passage of the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b around its parent star….
GRAVITY Instrument Captures Observations of Material Orbiting Close to a Black Hole
ESO’s exquisitely sensitive GRAVITY instrument has added further evidence to the long-standing assumption that a supermassive black hole lurks in the centre of the Milky…
MUSE Spectrograph Reveals a Universe Aglow
Deep observations made with the MUSE spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have uncovered vast cosmic reservoirs of atomic hydrogen surrounding distant galaxies. The exquisite…
FORS2 Captures the Stunning Details of Spiral Galaxy NGC 3981
FORS2, an instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, has observed the spiral galaxy NGC 3981 in all its glory. The image was captured as…
ESO’s VISTA Telescope Reveals the Interstellar Matter of the Carina Nebula
The Carina Nebula, one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the night sky, has been beautifully imaged by ESO’s VISTA telescope at the Paranal…
Elliptical Elegance – ESO Views Elliptical Galaxy NGC 5018
A glittering host of galaxies populate this rich image taken with ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope, a state-of-the-art 2.6-m telescope designed for surveying the sky in…
ESO’s VLT Captures Remarkably Sharp Test Images of Neptune
ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has achieved first light with a new adaptive optics mode called laser tomography — and has captured remarkably sharp test…
ESO’s Very Large Telescope Shows Star Cluster RCW 38 In All Its Glory
New observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope show the star cluster RCW 38 in all its glory. This image was taken during testing of the…
Striking Images of Blood-Red Moonset at Five-Second Intervals
ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek captured this photoset while visiting ESO’s high-altitude Paranal Observatory in Chile, where skies are remarkably clear. He snapped photographs of…