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Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi Brilliant blue stars litter the southern sky and the  galactic bulge  of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, hangs serenely above the horizon in this spectacular shot of ESO’s Paranal Observatory. This image was taken atop Cerro Paranal in Chile, home to ESO’s  Very Large Telescope  (VLT). In the foreground, the open dome of one of the four 1.8-metre  Auxiliary Telescopes  can be seen. The four Auxiliary Telescopes can be utilised together, to form the  Very Large Telescope Interferometer  (VLTI). The plane of the Milky Way is dotted with bright regions of hot gas. The very bright star towards the upper left corner of the frame is  Antares  — the brightest star in  Scorpius  and the fifteenth brightest star in the night sky. Text Credit:  ESO Resources Antares overlooking an Auxiliary Telescope Next Post Small Asteroid or Comet 'Visits' from Beyond the Solar System

Countless galaxies vie for attention in this monster image of the Fornax Galaxy Cluster, some appearing only as pinpricks of light while others dominate the foreground. One of these is the lenticular galaxy NGC 1316. The turbulent past of this much-studied galaxy has left it with a delicate structure of loops, arcs and rings that astronomers have now imaged in greater detail than ever before with the VLT Survey Telescope. This astonishingly deep image also reveals a myriad of dim objects along with faint intracluster light.  Credit: ESO/A. Grado & L. Limatola Captured using the exceptional sky-surveying abilities of the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, this deep view reveals the secrets of the luminous members of the Fornax Cluster, one of the richest and closest galaxy clusters to the Milky Way. This 2.3-gigapixel image is one of the largest images ever released by ESO. Perhaps the most fascinating member of the cluster is NGC 1316, ...