A color composite image in the g, r and i bands of a small piece of the COSMOS field, as imaged by the Hyper Suprime-Cam. This image contains thousands of galaxies as faint as 27th magnitude. The galaxies are seen at such large distances that the light from them has taken billions of years to reach us. The light from the faintest galaxies was emitted when the universe was less than 10 % of its present age. (Credit: Princeton University/HSC Project)This colourful image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows NGC 1055 in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). This large galaxy is thought to be up to 15 percent larger in diameter than the Milky Way. NGC 1055 appears to lack the whirling arms characteristic of a spiral, as it is seen edge-on. However, it displays odd twists in its structure that were probably caused by an interaction with a large neighbouring galaxy. Credit: ESOThis image of the sunlit part of Jupiter and its swirling atmosphere was created by a citizen scientist (Alex Mai) using data from Juno’s JunoCam instrument. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/MaiIn this incredible panorama, the night sky above ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) displays our cosmic neighbourhood in all its glory. The VLT is located 2635 metres above sea level at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. This image illustrates the importance, and the benefits, of placing astronomical telescopes in such remote places! Anyone making the long journey to the site — including ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek, who captured this scene — is rewarded with a truly spectacular view. On the right, behind the line of four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes that together make up the VLT, the faint red and green hues of airglow can be seen illuminating the sky above the horizon. In addition zodiacal light is illuminating the sky as well. This diffuse light is caused by microscopic particles of light-scattering space dust in the plane of the Solar System. While these features are beautiful, the most striking element of this image is undeniably the arc of the Milky Way. The bright arch of our home galaxy is peppered with dark filaments of dust, which absorb and obscure the light from the stars behind them, and bright patches where new stars are forming. Just beneath the Milky Way lie two of our small galactic neighbours, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and beneath them sit two of the VLT’s smaller 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes. 4-24-2017 Credit: P. Horálek/ESOHughes Space & Communications 100 Decal
