MUSE instrument – Astronomy Now

Supermassive black hole triggers blazing ring of star formation around galactic core

24 June 2021 Astronomy Now

A supermassive black hole at the heart of galaxy NGC 1097 powers a brilliant nuclear ring of run-away star formation as imaged by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope.

Supermassive black holes feast on vast reservoirs of hydrogen

30 December 2019 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have found a likely source of “food” – vast reservoirs of hydrogen – fueling the growth of supermassive black holes in the early universe

A stellar nursery bubbles up in the Large Magellanic Cloud

8 February 2019 Astronomy Now

Vast bubbles of ionised hydrogen gas are illuminated by hot young stars in gargantuan stellar nurseries like this one in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. This complex assembly of bubbles is host to a wide variety of objects, including one massive stellar object emitting a 33-lightyear-long jet.

Vast clouds of hydrogen aglow in early cosmos

1 October 2018 Astronomy Now

Vast clouds of atomic hydrogen in the early universe glow an ultraviolet blue in unexpected results indicating Lyman-alpha emissions across the entire sky.

Adaptive optics ‘tomography’ provides Hubble-class images

19 July 2018 Astronomy Now

A new adaptive optics system being tested on ESO’s Very Large Telescope provides a level of image sharpness that rivals or exceeds the Hubble Space Telescope in narrow fields of view.

Relativity passes another test, this one beyond the Milky Way

22 June 2018 Astronomy Now

Putting general relativity to the test, astronomers compared the known gravity of a galaxy with the bending of spacetime needed to produce a spectacular ‘Einstein ring’ and found, once again, that Einstein was correct.

Peering into the shrouded heart of a luminous Seyfert galaxy

29 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Seyfert galaxies are unusually luminous, powered by supermassive black holes feeding on galactic dust and debris. It is difficult to peer into the dust-shrouded cores of such galaxies, but the European Southern Observatory, combining radio and optical observations, provides an intriguing glimpse.

Astronomers locate isolated neutron star beyond our galaxy

9 April 2018 Astronomy Now

New images from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and other telescopes reveal a rich landscape of stars and glowing clouds of gas in one of our closest neighbouring galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud. The pictures have allowed astronomers to identify an elusive stellar corpse buried among filaments of gas left behind by a 2000-year-old supernova explosion.

Spectroscopic survey probes uncharted depths of Hubble Ultra Deep Field

1 December 2017 Astronomy Now

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have conducted the deepest spectroscopic survey ever. They focused on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, measuring distances and properties of 1600 very faint galaxies, including 72 galaxies that have never been detected before, even by Hubble itself.

Pillars of Creation revealed in 3-D

3 May 2015 Astronomy Now

The iconic 20-year-old Hubble image of the Pillars of Creation is reinterpreted in three dimensions by the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, suggesting that the Pillars of Destruction might be an equally apt name.