Outstanding shot of the #Sun rising behind ESO's Extremely Large #Telescope, currently under construction in #Chile. The dome is about 80 m tall; look at the size of those cranes! The ELT will have a 39 m primary mirror — the largest optical-infrared telescope in the world.
Many people imagine professional astronomers hunched over a #telescope and taking notes. We no longer work that way, as light captured by the telescope is registered by complex instruments. But sometimes it's fun to use your eyes!
I took this pic a few years ago, when we removed one of the instruments of ESO's Very Large Telescope in #Chile. A screen was temporarily attached in its place, and we used it to project the #Moon and show it to everyone at the observatory
We just released a HUGE mosaic of the so-called Running Chicken #Nebula: 1.5 billion pixels full of young stars and glowing hydrogen gas. The mosaic comprises data acquired with the VLT Survey #Telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory in #Chile
Happy #TowelDay to those who celebrate! Pro #astronomy tip: never install Genuine People Personality software in a #telescope. We did that at Paranal Observatory in #Chile and, well, bad idea.
Just in time for #Halloween, our colleague Juan Beltrán just sent us this amazing image of the #Moon rising behind ESO's Extremely Large #Telescope, currently under construction atop Cerro Armazones in #Chile
We've just started installing the aluminium cladding that will protect ESO's Extremely Large #Telescope from the harsh conditions of the Atacama Desert in #Chile.
It's amazing to see this project take shape. And it's hard to convey just how big this is –– the dome is 80 m tall!
Do you want to learn about the amazing #engineering behind large optical telescopes? Tom Scott recently visited ESO's Paranal Observatory in #Chile, and in his latest video he tells us all about it, including a sneak peek at our Extremely Large #Telescope !
We're making great progress with ESO's Extremely Large #Telescope in #Chile, it's now half completed! Not just the dome – work on other components such as the mirrors, control system, scientific instruments and support infrastructure is advancing at good pace.
Look closely. No, closer, really. Can you see the construction workers? This will give you an idea of just how massive ESO's Extremely Large #Telescope will be 🤯
This #photo was taken just a few days ago at the construction site in Cerro Armazones in #Chile.
Seeing the colossal dome of ESO's Extremely Large #Telescope moving for the first time is mind-blowing! 🤯
In this first test engineers used special hydraulic devices to rotate the dome 10 m back and forth at 1 cm/s. Once it's operational it'll move at about 5 km/h with motorised bogies.
Quite impressive, as the skeleton currently weighs ~2500 tons and it'll weigh ~6100 tons when finished!
This isn't your typical #unboxing#video! A few days ago the first segments of the huge 39-m mirror of ESO's Very Large #Telescope arrived in #Chile, and our engineers checked that they hadn't suffered any damage.
Each segment was shipped in its own box containing sensors that tracked the temperature, humidity and shocks throughout the entire 10 000 km journey from Europe.
How are we building the largest #telescope dome ever? In the latest episode of Chasing Starlight we take you on a behind-the-scenes tour of the dome of ESO's Extremely Large Telescope in #Chile
It's 88 m wide and 80 m tall, and it will shelter the ELT and its optics & instruments from the harsh environment of the Atacama Desert –– a true feat of #engineering
Phew! Thanks to new data from ESO's Very Large #Telescope, we now know that a white dwarf that was set for a close encounter with our Solar System in 29000 years isn't actually headed our way. Turns out that the intense magnetic field of the #star had biased the previous measurements of the approach speed. You're welcome everyone! 😉
Aaaah, I've missed this so much! Working from a balcony overlooking the Chilean #Atacama desert, with ESO's Very Large #Telescope in the background under clear blue skies.
Achievement unlocked! The first 18 segments of the primary mirror of ESO's Extremely Large #Telescope are on their way to #Chile 🇨🇱
The huge 39.3 m mirror of the telescope will comprise 798 of these hexagonal segments, plus 133 spares, as we'll eventually have to remove a couple of them every day to recoat them with a reflective layer.
#SciArt is a human activity, but often #nature itself provides the brushes and pigments.
Last year the South African Radio #Astronomy Observatory released a stunning view of the core of the #MilkyWay captured by the MeerKAT radio #telescope
Here's my edited version, where the colours map the so-called spectral index, which tells us what causes the radio emission. Those filaments do look like brush strokes, don't they?
Ok, this is cool: using the upgraded GRAVITY+ instrument at ESO's Very Large #Telescope, astronomers have directly measured the mass of a very distant supermassive black hole, when the #universe was only a couple billion years old.
With GRAVITY+ we can actually discern gas spinning around the black hole and work out its mass –– a technique used in nearby black holes but never directly in such distant ones until now.
The k’niPatn k’l⌣ stk’masqt outrigger (KKO) telescope.
The site is on the traditional territory of the #Similamix People in #BritishColumbia. The Upper #Similkameen#Indian Band offered the name, which means “a listening device for outer space”.
1/ This star might be dead, but it's still hungry! Using ESO's Very Large #Telescope in #Chile astronomers have observed a white dwarf –the corpse of a star similar to our Sun– gobbling planetary material from its surroundings via its magnetic field.
“A Photo 30+ Years in the Making”.
My dad and I once co-owned a 10” #telescope, but as years passed he’d forgotten that it was half mine and traded it for 2 smaller used scopes including a 130mm reflector. I was heartbroken but didn’t remind him and let it go. Recently I asked if he might send me the reflector since he hadn’t used it for 30+ years. I received it last week, cleaned and collimated it, then shot 72x30s on Andromeda. Not bad for a circa 1985 mirror. #astrophotography#Astrodon