ESO's VLT working as 16-meter telescope for first time

The ESPRESSO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile has used the combined light of all four of the 8.2-meter Unit Telescopes for the first time. Combining light from the Unit Telescopes in this way makes the VLT ...

Glory from gloom

A dark cloud of cosmic dust snakes across this spectacular wide field image, illuminated by the brilliant light of new stars. This dense cloud is a star-forming region called Lupus 3, where dazzlingly hot stars are born from ...

Stellar nursery blooms into view

The OmegaCAM camera on ESO's VLT Survey Telescope has captured this glittering view of the stellar nursery called Sharpless 29. Many astronomical phenomena can be seen in this giant image, including cosmic dust and gas clouds ...

Monster image of the Fornax Galaxy Cluster

Countless galaxies vie for attention in this monster image of the Fornax Galaxy Cluster, some appearing only as pinpricks of light while others dominate the foreground. One of these is the lenticular galaxy NGC 1316. The ...

A tale of three stellar cities

Using new observations from ESO's VLT Survey Telescope, astronomers have discovered three different populations of baby stars within the Orion Nebula Cluster. This unexpected discovery adds very valuable new insights for ...

VST captures three-in-one

Two of the sky's more famous residents share the stage with a lesser-known neighbour in this enormous new three gigapixel image from ESO's VLT Survey Telescope (VST). On the right lies Sharpless 2-54, the iconic Eagle Nebula ...

Dark matter may be smoother than expected

Analysis of a giant new galaxy survey, made with ESO's VLT Survey Telescope in Chile, suggests that dark matter may be less dense and more smoothly distributed throughout space than previously thought. An international team ...

First signs of weird quantum property of empty space?

By studying the light emitted from an extraordinarily dense and strongly magnetized neutron star using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers may have found the first observational indications of a strange quantum effect, ...

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