The peculiar galaxy Centaurus A is pictured in this image taken with by the Wide Field Imager at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. With a total exposure time of more than 50 hours, this is probably the deepest view of this peculiar and spectacular object every created. Caption and photo courtesy of the ESO
Centaurus A is one of our favorite galaxies. We’ve written about it a couple of times and it was also featured not too long ago in our Photo of the Week feature (Click here for that image). This image, however, is far better than the last. It is, after all, the deepest view of the galaxy every created, according to a release from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
According to the release:
Astronomers think that the bright nucleus, strong radio emission and jet features of Centaurus A are produced by a central black hole with a mass of about 100 million times that of the Sun.
Supermassive Black Hole!
Matter from the dense central parts of the galaxy releases vast amounts of energy as it falls towards the black hole. This Wide Field Imager (WFI) picture allows us to appreciate the galaxy’s elliptical nature, which shows up as the elongated shape of the fainter outer parts. The glow that fills much of the picture comes from hundreds of billions of cooler and older stars.
Check out our past Photo of the Week winners here.
This artist’s impression shows the remarkable planetary system around the Sun-like star HD 10180. This system is similar to the Solar System in terms of number of planets and the presence of a regular pattern in the sizes of the orbits. Courtesy of the ESO/L. Calçada
Say it ain’t so. There’s a chance we might not be part of the biggest planetary system in the universe.
We already knew there were at least six planets orbiting the star HD 10180, located in the southern constellation of Hydrus. Now, according to the author of this paper, there could actually be nine planets orbiting the star, which lies about 125-light-years away from Earth.
This would “make this star a record holder in having more planets in its orbits than there are in the Solar System,” Mikko Tuomi stated in the paper. “We revise the uncertainties of the previously reported six planets in the system, verify the existence of the seventh signal, and announce the detection of two additional statistically significant signals in the data.”
The discovery was made after Tuomi reanalyzed HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) data.
VISTA has captured this unusual view of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a planetary nebula located 700 light-years away. Caption and photo courtesy of ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit
Ah yes. The eye of Sauron. Wait a minute…
No, no. This is the Helix Nebula and it’s definitely a favorite of mine. This extremely crisp photograph was captured with the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope.
The nebula, which is one of the closest to Earth, formed when the sun was at its last stages of life. Read more about the nebula and why it appears the way it does here.
Want to see what the nebula looked like before VISTA? Check this out.
This image of the Omega Nebula, captured by ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), is one of the sharpest of this object ever taken from the ground. It shows the dusty, rosy central parts of the famous star-forming region in fine detail. Caption and photo courtesy of the ESO
This beautiful rose-colored nebula can go by many names – the Omega Nebula, the Swan Nebula, the Horseshoe Nebula and even the Lobster Nebula, according to the European Southern Observatory. It shows gas, clouds and forming stars.
It’s located in the constellation of Sagittarius and is about 6,500 light-years away. How amazing is it that this image was taken from the ground? Good job, Very Large Telescope (VLT). (ha! I still get a laugh out of that name.)
Over the past 9 months, over 160 exoplanets – or planets outside of our solar system – have been found. Those discoveries include a diamond planet, an invisible one, and another darker than the blackest coal. That surpasses figures from 2010, where 110 exoplanets were confirmed.
This week, the number of known exoplanets increased tremendously. Over 80 were confirmed, according to scientists in several worldwide organizations. This increase in planetary discovery certainly had to do with the second Extreme Solar Systems conference. The six-day event, which took place Sept. 11 to 17, brought together hundreds of exoplanet researchers and enthusiasts.
On the second day of the conference, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) came out with a huge discovery. It had found 50 exoplanets, including one in the “Goldilocks” – or habitable – zone. That means life could be supported on that planet. Also, among the 50 included 16 “Super-Earths,” or planets whose mass is one to 10 times that of Earth.
Big. Very big.
The ESO certainly started the week off with a bang. The discovery was due to the HARPS system, a spectrograph on one of the world’s largest telescopes. Since it began planet hunting in 2003, HARPS has help find 150 planets.
“How is anyone going to top that announcement,” I thought.
The next day, UK astronomers from the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) team announced that it had found 23 gas giants, or planets much like our Jupiter.
Ok. Nice showing. But what, or who, is WASP? Does it even matter? 23 isn’t going to beat 50.
So we waited for NASA. What did it have up its sleeve? NASA sent out a press release that indicated there was going to be an exoplanet announcement with the Lucas Film guys. Hmmm? Lucas Films? What is going on? (NASA also announced that it had come up with a plan for deeper, manned space travel, i.e. Mars, asteroids.)
I certainly didn’t think NASA was going to announce that it had found Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s home in Star Wars.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a world where two suns set over the horizon instead of just one. The planet, called Kepler-16b, is the most "Tatooine-like" planet yet found in our galaxy and is depicted here in this artist's concept with its two stars. Tatooine is the name of Luke Skywalker's home world in the science fiction movie Star Wars. In this case, the planet it not thought to be habitable. It is a cold world, with a gaseous surface, but like Tatooine, it circles two stars.
Ok, not the real Tatooine, but a planet called Kepler 16-b that orbits two stars. The discovery was due to the Kepler mission, which has been planet hunting since 2009. It has helped confirm 21 planets and identified over 1,200 planetary candidates.
I think Kepler might have beaten HARPS.
You’re putting Star Wars against something we can’t really envision. Sure, we can see the illustrations, but it’s not the same.
No matter who came out on top this week, the fascinating thing is that the discoveries made a lot of people talk about science. With this week’s additions, there are now 684 confirmed planets outside of our solar system. How cool is that?
We’re living in interesting times, my friends. I can’t wait to see what they find next.
