From ESO: “VLT Takes Most Detailed Infrared Image of the Carina Nebula”
8 February 2012
No Writer Credit
“ESO’s Very Large Telescope has delivered the most detailed infrared image of the Carina Nebula stellar nursery taken so far. Many previously hidden features, scattered across a spectacular celestial landscape of gas, dust and young stars, have emerged. This is one of the most dramatic images ever created by the VLT.
ESO’s Very Large Telescope along with an infrared-sensitive camera called HAWK-I
Deep in the heart of the southern Milky Way lies a stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula. It is about 7500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Carina (The Keel) [1]. This cloud of glowing gas and dust is one of the closest incubators of very massive stars to the Earth and includes several of the brightest and heaviest stars known. One of them, the mysterious and highly unstable star Eta Carinae, was the second brightest star in the entire night sky for several years in the 1840s and is likely to explode as a supernova in the near future, by astronomical standards. The Carina Nebula is a perfect laboratory for astronomers studying the violent births and early lives of stars.
Although this nebula is spectacular in normal visible-light pictures (eso0905), many of its secrets are hidden behind thick clouds of dust. To penetrate this veil a European team of astronomers, led by Thomas Preibisch (University Observatory, Munich, Germany) has used the power of ESO’s Very Large Telescope along with an infrared-sensitive camera called HAWK-I”
See the full post here. On the page are a series of links to many more images, and also two videos.
THE BASIC TOOLS OF THE E.S.O.
Paranal Platform The VLT
ALMA Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array
The European Extremely Large Telescope
VISTA (the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy)
ESO, the European Southern Observatory, builds and operates a suite of the world’s most advanced ground-based astronomical telescopes.
