... ESO is building what will be the World's largest optical telescope array, The Very Large Telescope (VLT). The VLT Project organisation is responsible for the design and construction of the Unit Telescopes, including enclosures, optics, adapter-rotators and coating unit. ... Unit Telescopes Overview - This page is outdated, an update is in process. ... Secondary mirror (M2 Unit) - This page is outdated, an update is in process. ... Coating Unit - This page is outdated, an update is in process. ...

M1 image More About M1 Nice Color Picture . ... M16 image More About M16 HST image . ... M31 image More About M31 Nice Color Picture . ... M42 image ; M43 image More About M42/43 Nice Color CCD Picture . M51 image More About M51 Color Image of M51 M51 Supernova . M57 image More About M57 Nice Color CCD Picture Very Deep M57 Image . ... M81 image More About M81 M81 Supernova Ultraviolet Image of M81 More about Ultraviolet Imaging . M82 image More About M82 M82 False Color M82 True Color . ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Our Galaxy . ... Other Galaxies . ... Telescopes and Observatories . ... Everyone loves stunning pictures of spiral galaxies,€а I have said this before and will no doubt say it again. The folks at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) know this too, and their latest public image release is a bumper set of serenely spinning spirals. ... Tweets that mention Six glorious spiral galaxies seen by the European Southern Observatory. ...

... ATNF Home . ... About ATNF overview . ... Australia Telescope Steering Committee . ... Parkes radio telescope . ... HI in Elliptical Galaxies . ... Next Section: HI in small elliptical . ... Several properties of elliptical galaxies appear to change at an absolute magnitude around M Large elliptical galaxies (defined here as those with M brighter than -19) are usually dominated by an old stellar population (e.g. Bressan et al. 1996), and have most of their gas in a hot X-ray corona (Forman et al. ...

... While "First Light" was achieved at the second 8.2-m VLT Unit Telescope (UT2) ahead of schedule, UT1 produced its sharpest image so far. ... It had long been ESO's intention to provide "real" names to the four VLT Unit Telescopes, to replace the current, somewhat dry and technical designations as UT1 to UT4. ... The participants were left with the impression of mounting expectations, just four weeks before the first VLT Unit Telescope, Antu (UT1), will receive the first visiting astronomers. ...

... HUBBLE UNCOVERS DUST DISK AROUND A MASSIVE BLACK HOLE . Resembling a gigantic hubcap in space, a 3,700 light-year-diameter dust disk encircles a 300 million solar-mass black hole in the center of the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052. ... Because the jets in NGC 7052 are not perpendicular to the disk, it may indicate that the black hole and the dust disk in NGC 7052 do not have a common origin. ... NGC 7052 is located in the constellation of Vulpecula, 191 million light-years from Earth. ...

... The European HST Archive has been moved to ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre ( ESAC ), Spain, where most of ESA's Space Science Archives are located and operated from. ... The Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF), jointly operated by ESA and the European Southern Observatory ( ESO ) was, until the end of 2010, the European HST science facility, supporting the European astronomy community in exploiting the research opportunities provided by the Hubble Space Telescope. ...

... Submitted by Al Takeda on 12/24/2012 23:22:03 . Large and Small Magellanic Clouds . These are 2 irregular dwarf galaxies that are members of the local group and are currently companions to our Milky Way galaxy. ... The Large Magellanic Cloud is 160,000 light years away and The Small Magellanic Cloud (in the constellation Tucana) is 200,000 light years away. They are 75,000 light-years apart from each other. ... Copyright (c) Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, Inc. ...

... 50 Weirdest Objects . ... Get to Know the Night Sky . ... Picture of the Day . ... Observing springtime deep-sky objects with a large telescope . ... How can the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) take pictures of objects light-years away but not get a good picture of Pluto? ... At its distance, it subtends a smaller angle on the sky than does a galaxy at a distance of billions of light-years. Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ... Get full access to StarDome PLUS . ...

... Girdling the second largest planet in the Solar System, Saturn's Rings are one of the most spectacular sights for earthbound telescopes. ... Likely a satellite companion of the Local Group's dominant player, the large spiral Andromeda (M31), the Pegasus dwarf galaxy is almost hidden in the glare of relatively bright foreground stars in our own Milkyway. ... These near-infrared Hubble images of dust surrounding young stars offer the latest tantalizing evidence for planets beyond our Solar System. ...

... Editor's choices for the most educational Astronomy Pictures of the Day about the Local Group of galaxies: . APOD: 2000 October 23 - Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy NGC 205 in the Local Group . ... Members include the Great Andromeda Galaxy (M31), M32 , M33 , the Large Magellanic Cloud , the Small Magellanic Cloud , Dwingeloo 1 , several small irregular galaxies , and many dwarf elliptical and dwarf spheroidal galaxies . ... APOD: 1999 January 22 - Pegasus dSph: Little Galaxy of the Local Group . ...

... Confirmation that a mysterious cloud of hydrogen in the Virgo Cluster is a dark galaxy has been published by a team of astronomers . New evidence from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands has been used to rule out all but one of the ideas put forward to explain the existence of VIRGOHI 21, an intergalactic gas cloud 50 million light-years from the Earth. ... Only Dark Matter can account for the existence of such a system. ...

... Astrophysics Group . ... Galaxies and Quasars . ... All galaxies emit radio waves as well as light. ... Often, they shoot out two jets, magnetic fields and very fast electrons (see below). ... This explains why we often see one very bright jet ? ... Quasars, the most powerful sources, often show a prominent jet, strong radio galaxies like the one to the right more usually don?t. The most powerful of these radio sources can be detected at immense distances in the Universe ? ...

An Ancient Universe: How Astronomers Know the Vast Scale of Cosmic Time . GALAXIES . This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a selection of galaxies great "islands" of billions of stars seen in every direction our telescopes can look. ... The galaxy that appears so large at the upper left is 300 million lightyears away -- so far that light from it takes 300 million years to reach us. Some of the galaxies that look smaller are even further away. ... Return to An Ancient Universe . ...

... Meade Instruments Corporation . ... Refracting telescopes (Meade Models NG-60, NGC-60, DS-2070AT, ETX-70AT, LXD55-AR5, LX55-AR6 ) and mirror-lens telescopes ( ETX-90AT, 105AT, 125AT, LXD55-SC8, 8LX90, LX200 GPS Series ) are generally more versatile in a wide array of land and astronomical applications. ... The intermediate-level observer, or the non-casual telescope user who wishes to purchase one telescope for a lifetime, should consider a Meade Model LXD55 series, 8LX90, or LX200GPS. ... Meade 4M ...

... Feeding the Monster: Gas Caught in its Death Spiral into a Massive Black Hole . ... Stromlo Professor Mike Dopita have used the Hubble Space Telescope to discover how a massive Black Hole in a nearby galaxy feeds itself. ... Earlier Hubble Telescope data obtained by another team member, Professor Holland Ford of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, had found a disk of gas rushing around the Black Hole at a speed of 500 kilometers a second. ...

An image of the grand design of spiral galaxy M100 obtained with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope resolves individual stars within the majestic spiral arms. ... Hubble has the ability to resolve individual stars in other galaxies and measure accurately the light from very faint stars. This makes space telescope invaluable for identifying a rare class of pulsating stars, called Cepheid Variable stars embedded within M100's spiral arms. ... 617) 495-7062 . Fax: (617) 495-7356 . ...

... The British consortium, currently led by Professor Gordon Bromage of the University of Central Lancashire , includes the Universities of Keele , Nottingham and Southampton , the Open University and Armagh Observatory and will be joining the other partners in the SALT project, from South Africa, Poland, Germany, USA and New Zealand. ... SALT Dome . ... The SALT project is managed by a team based at the SALT Headquarters at Sutherland and South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town. ...

About us . ... Telescopes . ... Apart from the 6-meter telescope BTA two small telescopes are operative at SAO: the 1-m and 0.6-m telescopes, both manufactured by Carl Zeiss, Jena, are located near the BTA. ... These telescopes are used for adjusting the equipment and techniques of observations used at the BTA. ... The observational time allocation and also a brief description of the equipment of the 1-m telescope, which is used either permanently or mainly on this telescope, are presented below. ...

... Our Sun is part of a huge wheel-shaped collection of stars. ... Astronomers have long suspected it was a very massive black hole, and that every galaxy had such a central mass, created early in the history of the universe. ... However, unless that object happens to be headed directly at the black hole (a relatively small target) it will just swing around and fly away again, like a comet making a pass at the Sun. The velocity acquired in falling towards the black hole also helps it escape. ...