Image of the Week

25 December 2019: The Milky Way hangs poised over the Gemini South telescope The colorful band of the Milky Way is poised above the 8.1-meter Gemini South telescope of NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory in this arresting image, which depicts bright patches of stars threaded through with winding lanes of dust. The Galactic Center hangs directly above the telescope, framing one of the most powerful astronomical observatories in the southern hemisphere. The picture also captures the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which appear on the left side of the image. These dwarf irregular galaxies are satellites of the Milky Way, and lack the conspicuous spiral arms of larger nearby galaxies such as the Andromeda Galaxy (also part of the Local Group of galaxies which includes our Milky Way). Despite being a fraction of the size of the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds contain billions of stars, and together they are a prominent …

18 December 2019: The staff of NSF NOIRLab wish you and yours a happy holiday season and hope your skies are clear, dark and full of stars!

11 December 2019: Jupiter, Venus and the Moon Converge over Observatories: Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope operator Carlos Corco obtained this image of the recent conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and the Moon (right) over the 8-meter Gemini South telescope (left) on Cerro Pachón in Chile. A conjunction is the apparent meeting of two or more celestial bodies in the night sky. Also visible (in the distance, just right of center) is the silhouette of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) which is currently under construction. In late 2022, LSST is slated to begin an unprecedented, decade-long, survey of the night sky in optical wavelengths, surveying the entire visible sky every few nights. Using an 8.4-meter mirror (with an effective aperture of about 6.7 meters) and the largest digital camera ever fabricated for optical astronomy, LSST will shed light on astronomical questions ranging from the nature of dark matter and dark energy to the …

4 December 2019: Breathtaking observatory panorama showcases the Milky Way This breathtaking panorama, captured by Hernan Stockebrand, showcases the pristine skies at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). CTIO, a program of NSF NOIRLab, is a complex of astronomical telescopes and instruments in the Chilean Andes. CTIO’s mountainous surroundings and altitude — the site is 2200 meters (7200 feet) above sea level — ensure the mountaintop observatory enjoys spectacular night skies. This colorful panorama shows the arch of the Milky Way hanging above the observatory facilities, as well as strands of low clouds illuminated by the Moon, which is visible on the right side of the image. At the center of this image is the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, with the SMARTS 1.5-meter Telescope to the right and the SMARTS 0.9-meter Telescope at far right. To the left of the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope is the 0.9-meter Curtis Schmidt Telescope and the …

27 November 2019: Transit image with a twist (and a turn!) About 13 times per century, fleeting Mercury can be seen passing directly in front of the Sun in what is called a transit. The most recent Mercury transit occurred on 11 November 11, 2019. Teams on Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) and Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) developed observing plans in an effort to recreate an experiment to calculate the Earth-Sun distance. CTIO’s Daniel Munizaga obtained this image of the transit with a 6-inch Celestron Nexstar telescope and a Nikon D750 camera by taking images every five minutes. While the path of Mercury across the Sun in fact traced a straight line, in this image the path appears to loop backwards due to an effect called field rotation as the telescope and camera track across the sky. Juan Seguel also imaged the transit of Mercury from CTIO, accompanied by students from the …

20 November 2019: International Gemini Observatory follows a comet from beyond: NOIRLab’s International Gemini Observatory continues tracking a visiting comet from beyond our Solar System. Gemini’s second image release of the comet, discovered by Russian amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov in August of this year, reveals the evolution of the comet as it approaches its closest approach to our sun in December. The image also features the distant background galaxy (going by the catchy designation: 2dFGRS TGN363Z174) that happened to appear adjacent to the comet when the image was captured on the night of November 11–12 2019. “The comet is doing what we would expect a comet to do as it approaches the Sun,” according to Meg Schwamb of Queen’s University Belfast who led the observations. “Gas is being vaporized and the gas cloud, or coma, is expanding and being blown away from the Sun. It’s reassuring that comets from beyond our Solar System …

13 November 2019: Earlier this week, while observing with DECam on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF NOIRLab, astronomers Clara Martínez-Vázquez and Cliff Johnson noticed something interesting. One of their images, the 333 seconds-exposure seen here, contained at least 19 streaks that they quickly surmised were due to the second batch of Starlink satellites launched last week. The gaps in the satellite tracks are due to the gaps between the DECam CCD chips in the 2.2-degree field. At the same time, the CTIO all-sky camera recorded the satellites which were even visible with the unaided eye. Several frames from that camera can be seen in this timelapse video from CTIO. Links Gemini North Cloud Camera timelapse video of the passage of the Starlink satellite cluster over Maunakea. This sequence was obtained on the night of 12-13 November. CTIO all-sky camera