Calendario 2012 astronomia - eso

ESO Calendar 2012
European Southern Observatory

Cover
Another perfect day at Paranal

January
The VLT in action

February
Wide Field Imager view of a Milky Way look-alike, NGC 6744

March
Messier 78: A reflection nebula in Orion

April
The E-ELT on Cerro Armazones (artist’s impression)

May
VLT looks into the eyes of the virgin

June
VST image of the star-forming regionMessier 17

Rolling red hills stretch out below the exceptionally clear blue sky that is typical of ESO’s Paranal Observatory. This remote area of the Chilean Atacama Desert is one of the driest sites on Earth and a perfect window on the Universe. The atmosphere here is extremely dry and clear, and has very low turbulence, offering the most suitable conditions for optical and near-infraredastronomical observations. The 2600-metre-high Cerro Paranal stands out at the centre of this view, taken looking towards the south. This flattened mountaintop is home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the world’s most advanced groundbased optical and near infrared astronomical facility, equipped with four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes and four 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes. Although the telescope domesclose at dawn, and nothing seems to move on the surface of this barren desert, the VLT never rests. Every day, a team of engineers and technicians works hard to prepare the telescopes and instruments for another “perfect night”. Credit: ESO/José Francisco Salgado

The VLT during observations. In this picture, the four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (UTs) are visible, named from left to right, Antu,Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun. In front of the UTs are the four 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs), entirely dedicated to interferometry. A reddish laser beam is being launched from UT4 (Yepun) to create an artificial star at an altitude of 90 kilometres in the Earth´s mesosphere. This laser guide star is part of the adaptive optics system, which allows astronomers to remove the effects ofatmospheric turbulence, producing images almost as sharp as if the telescope were in space. Credit: ESO/S. Brunier

This picture of the nearby galaxy NGC 6744 was taken with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla. The large spiral galaxy is similar to the Milky Way, making this image look like a picture postcard of our own galaxy sent from extragalactic space. The picture wascreated from exposures taken through four different filters that passed blue, yellow–green, red light, and the glow coming from hydrogen gas. These are shown in this picture as blue, green, orange and red, respectively. Credit: ESO

This new image of the reflection nebula Messier 78 was captured using the Wide Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory,Chile. This colour picture was created from many monochrome exposures taken through blue, yellow–green and red filters, supplemented by exposures through a filter that isolates light from glowing hydrogen gas. The total exposure times were 9, 9, 17.5 and 15.5 minutes per filter, respectively. Credit: ESO/Igor Chekalin

Artist’s impression of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) on CerroArmazones, a 3060-metre-high mountaintop in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The E-ELT will be the largest optical/infrared telescope in the world — the world’s biggest eye on the sky. Credit: ESO

This striking image, taken with the FORS2 instrument on the Very Large Telescope, shows a beautiful yet peculiar pair of galaxies, NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, nicknamed The Eyes. The larger of these, at the top ofthe picture, NGC 4438, is thought to have once been a spiral galaxy that was strongly deformed by collisions in the relatively recent past. The two galaxies belong to the Virgo Cluster and are about 50 million light-years away. Credit: ESO

The first released VLT Survey Telescope (VST) image shows the spectacular starforming region Messier 17, also known as the Omega Nebula or the Swan Nebula,...