Supergiant star with a thick dust disc

How is it possible that HD 62623, a hot super-giant star on the verge of death, is surrounded by a disc, generally only associated with infant stars? Using long-baseline stellar interferometry at ESO's VLT interferometer, ...

Double vision: New instrument casts its eyes to the sky

The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer has taken its first images of the star Beta Peg in the constellation Pictor -- an encouraging start for an instrument designed to probe the cosmic neighborhoods where Earth-like ...

An Intriguing, Glowing Galaxy

A supermassive black hole may be responsible for the glowing appearance of galaxy 3C 305, located about 600 million light years away in the constellation Draco. Composite data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other ...

Major milestone: First two ALMA telescope antennas linked

On 30 April, the team observed the first "interferometric fringes" of an astronomical source by linking two 12-metre diameter ALMA antennas, together with the other critical parts of the system. Mars was chosen as a suitable ...

In the heart of the Orion Nebula

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of astronomers, led by Stefan Kraus and Gerd Weigelt from the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, used ESO's Very Large telescope Interferometer (VLTI) to obtain the sharpest ...

Paper explores ideal orbits for space-based interferometers

Ever since the telescope was invented in 1608, astronomers have striven for bigger and better telescopes. When it comes to instruments to observe the sky, bigger really is better whether you are observing faint galaxies or ...

The economic impact of a Very Large Telescope

The European Southern Observatory's VLT, Very Large Telescope, is a group of four 8.2-metre diameter optical telescopes located in northern Chile. It also has four movable 1.8-metre diameter auxiliary telescopes and they ...

page 2 from 2