#vphas

[blasteffect]

Gum 3 Nebula !

A bright pink koi fish has been spotted swimming across the southern sky. The European Southern Observatory's (ESO) VLT Survey Telescope (VST) snapped a beautiful new view of the Gum 3 nebula, located about 3,600 light-years from Earth. The nebula — an interstellar cloud of gas and dust that plays a key role in the life cycle of stars — appears to take the shape of a koi fish, varieties of carp that are known for their vibrant colors.

Image credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team. Ack.: CASU

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New ESO image captures a dark wolf in the sky

For Halloween, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reveals this spooktacular image of a dark nebula that creates the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colorful cosmic backdrop. Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, it was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile.

Found in the constellation Scorpius, near the center of the Milky Way in the sky, the Dark Wolf Nebula is located around 5,300 light-years from Earth. This image takes up an area in the sky equivalent to four full moons, but is actually part of an even larger nebula called Gum 55. If you look closely, the wolf could even be a werewolf, its hands ready to grab an unsuspecting bystander.

If you thought that darkness equals emptiness, think again. Dark nebulae are cold clouds of cosmic dust, so dense that they obscure the light of stars and other objects behind them. As their name suggests, they do not emit visible light, unlike other nebulae. Dust grains within them absorb visible light and only let through radiation at longer wavelengths, like infrared light. Astronomers study these clouds of frozen dust because they often contain new stars in the making.

Of course, tracing the wolf's ghost-like presence in the sky is only possible because it contrasts with a bright background. This image shows in spectacular detail how the dark wolf stands out against the glowing star-forming clouds behind it. The colorful clouds are built up mostly of hydrogen gas and glow in reddish tones excited by the intense UV radiation from the newborn stars within them.

Some dark nebulae, like the Coalsack Nebula, can be seen with the naked eye –– and play a key role in how First Nations interpret the sky–– but not the Dark Wolf. This image was created using data from the VLT Survey Telescope, which is owned by the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy (INAF) and is hosted at ESO's Paranal Observatory, in Chile's Atacama Desert. The telescope is equipped with a specially designed camera to map the southern sky in visible light.

The picture was compiled from images taken at different times, each one with a filter letting in a different color of light. They were all captured during the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), which has studied some 500 million objects in our Milky Way.

Surveys like this help scientists to better understand the life cycle of stars within our home galaxy, and the obtained data are made publicly available through the ESO science portal. Explore this treasure trove of data yourself: who knows what other eerie shapes you will uncover in the dark, say the scientists.

IMAGE: Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, this cosmic cloud was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile. Located around 5,300 light-years from Earth, the cold clouds of cosmic dust create the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colorful backdrop of glowing gas clouds. Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team

[unspokenmantra]

This 1.5-billion-pixel image, captured by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) hosted at ESO’s Paranal site in Chile, reveals in spectacular detail the so-called Running Chicken Nebula — a vast stellar nursery located about 6500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. 🤩

This image is a large mosaic comprising hundreds of separate frames carefully stitched together. It spans an area in the sky of about 25 full Moons 🌕, offering an incredible view of the several regions making up the nebula.

Overall in this image, there are more wonders than can be described, but you can discover some here:

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2320/

📷 ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: CASU

[cavenewstimes]

VST Captures New Image of Dark Wolf Nebula

Astronomers using the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile have taked a 283-million-pixel image of the Dark Wolf Nebula. This image, taken by ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope, shows the Dark Wolf Nebula. Image credit: ESO / VPHAS+ Team. The Dark Wolf Nebula is located approximately 5,300 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius. “Dark nebulae are cold clouds of cosmic…

[hobbyspacer]

ESO: Merger of 2 stars creates a magnetic star and a nebula

The latest report from the European Southern Observatory (ESO): Beautiful nebula, violent history: clash of stars solves stellar mystery

This image, taken with the VLT Survey Telescope hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, shows the beautiful nebula NGC 6164/6165, also known as the Dragon’s Egg. The nebula is a cloud of gas and dust surrounding a pair of stars called HD 148937. In a new study using ESO data, astronomers have shown that the two stars are unusually different from each other — one appears much younger and, unlike the other, is magnetic. Moreover, the nebula is significantly younger than either star at its heart, and is made up of gases normally found deep within a star and not on the outside. These clues together helped solve the mystery of the HD 148937 system — there were most likely three stars in the system until two of them clashed and merged, creating a new, larger and magnetic star. This violent event also created the spectacular nebula that now surrounds the remaining stars. Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: CASU When astronomers looked at a stellar pair at the heart of a stunning cloud of gas and dust, they were in for a surprise. Star pairs are typically very similar, like twins, but in HD 148937, one star appears younger and, unlike the other, is magnetic. New data from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) suggest there were originally three stars in the system, until two of them clashed and merged. This violent event created the surrounding cloud and forever altered the system’s fate. “When doing background reading, I was struck by how special this system seemed,” says Abigail Frost, an astronomer at ESO in Chile and lead author of the study published today in Science. The system, HD 148937, is located about 3800 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the Norma constellation. It is made up of two stars much more massive than the Sun and surrounded by a beautiful nebula, a cloud of gas and dust. “A nebula surrounding two massive stars is a rarity, and it really made us feel like something cool had to have happened in this system. When looking at the data, the coolness only increased.” https://youtu.be/1pPnHX4YukE “After a detailed analysis, we could determine that the more massive star appears much younger than its companion, which doesn't make any sense since they should have formed at the same time!” The age difference — one star appears to be at least 1.5 million years younger than the other — suggests something must have rejuvenated the more massive star.

This collection of panels shows three artist’s impressions depicting the violent event that changed the fate of the stellar system HD 148937; a real astronomical image is shown in the last panel. Originally, the system had at least three stars (top left panel), two of them close together and another one much more distant, until one day the two inner stars clashed and merged (top right panel). This violent event created a new, larger and magnetic star, now in a pair with the more distant one (bottom left panel). The merger also released the materials that created the spectacular nebula now surrounding the stars (bottom right panel).Credit: ESO/L. Calçada, VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: CASU Another piece of the puzzle is the nebula surrounding the stars, known as NGC 6164/6165. It is 7500 years old, hundreds of times younger than both stars. The nebula also shows very high amounts of nitrogen, carbon and oxygen. This is surprising as these elements are normally expected deep inside a star, not outside; it is as if some violent event had set them free. To unravel the mystery, the team assembled nine years' worth of data from the PIONIER and GRAVITY instruments, both on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), located in Chile’s Atacama Desert. They also used archival data from the FEROS instrument at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. “We think this system had at least three stars originally; two of them had to be close together at one point in the orbit whilst another star was much more distant,” explains Hugues Sana, a professor at KU Leuven in Belgium and the principal investigator of the observations. “The two inner stars merged in a violent manner, creating a magnetic star and throwing out some material, which created the nebula. The more distant star formed a new orbit with the newly merged, now-magnetic star, creating the binary we see today at the centre of the nebula.” https://youtu.be/DfYV0cZ9Ym0 “The merger scenario was already in my head back in 2017 when I studied nebula observations obtained with the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Telescope,” “Finding an age discrepancy between the stars suggests that this scenario is the most plausible one and it was only possible to show it with the new ESO data.” This scenario also explains why one of the stars in the system is magnetic and the other is not — another peculiar feature of HD 148937 spotted in the VLTI data. At the same time, it helps solve a long-standing mystery in astronomy: how massive stars get their magnetic fields. While magnetic fields are a common feature of low-mass stars like our Sun, more massive stars cannot sustain magnetic fields in the same way. Yet some massive stars are indeed magnetic.

This wide-field view, created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2, shows the rich star clouds in the constellation of Norma (the Carpenter’s Square) in our Milky Way galaxy. The beautiful nebula NGC 6164/6165, also known as the Dragon’s Egg, appears in the centre of the image. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin Astronomers had suspected for some time that massive stars could acquire magnetic fields when two stars merge. But this is the first time researchers find such direct evidence of this happening. In the case of HD 148937, the merger must have happened recently. “Magnetism in massive stars isn't expected to last very long compared to the lifetime of the star, so it seems we have observed this rare event very soon after it happened,” Frost adds. ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in the Chilean Atacama Desert, will enable researchers to work out what happened in the system in more detail, and perhaps reveal even more surprises. Links - Research paper (preprint; for the final version of the embargoed paper, please check https://www.eurekalert.org/press/scipak/ or contact scipak@aaas.org while the embargo lasts) - Photos of the VLT/VLTI - Find out more about ESO's Extremely Large Telescope on our dedicated website and press kit - For journalists: subscribe to receive our releases under embargo in your language - For scientists: got a story? Pitch your research === Amazon Ads === Celestron - NexStar 130SLT Computerized Telescope - Compact and Portable - Newtonian Reflector Optical Design - SkyAlign Technology - Computerized Hand Control - 130mm Aperture ==== An Infinity of Worlds: Cosmic Inflation and the Beginning of the Universe Read the full article

[netmassimo]

An image captured by the OmegaCAM instrument mounted on ESO's VST in Chile shows details of the nebula cataloged as Sh2-284. It's part of the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), a survey that included over 500 million objects in the Milky Way to improve our understanding of stars' life cycles. Sh2-284 is a sort of star nursery whose shape was compared to that of a cat's face and for this nicknamed "smiling cat".

[aldocerandaz]

El resplandor de una gaviota cósmica

Perfectamente bien visible la gaviota cósmica se está “comiendo” una estrella y sus entrelazados compuestos de formación para nuevas estrellas esculpiendo las aladas nubes de gas y polvo finamente delineados en la exposición. @writercosmo72 Crédito:ESO/equipo VPHAS+/NJ Wright (Universidad de Keele) El colorido y tenue Sharpless 2-296 forma las “alas” de un área del cielo conocida como la…

[andromeda1023]

The dark clouds in this image, taken from ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, almost resemble something supernatural, like the wispy trails of ghosts in the sky. But there is no need to call the ghostbusters! These clouds, known as Barnard 92 (right) and Barnard 93 (left) are dark nebulae: they look pitch black because the dense gas and dust they contain block out the background light, creating these hazy ghostlike features.

These nebulae are stellar nurseries, where new stars are born out of the collapsing dense gas and dust. This whole region of space imaged here is actually part of a much larger stellar complex, called the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (or Messier 24, catalogued by Charles Messier in 1764). This area is so rich in stars that it is clearly visible to the naked eye during dark nights, in the constellation of Sagittarius.

This image was taken with an enormous 268 million pixel camera called OmegaCAM on the VLT Survey Telescope. OmegaCAM is designed for capturing wide fields like this image, where you could impressively fit four full Moons. This image is part of the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), which has mapped diffuse nebulae as well as both young and evolved stars in our galaxy.Credit:

ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

[scienceacumen]

The dark clouds in this image, almost resemble something supernatural, like the wispy trails of ghosts in the sky. But there is no need to call the ghostbusters! These clouds, known as Barnard 92 (right) and Barnard 93 (left) are dark nebulae: they look pitch black because the dense gas and dust they contain block out the background light, creating these hazy ghostlike features.

These nebulae are stellar nurseries, where new stars are born out of the collapsing dense gas and dust. This whole region of space imaged here is actually part of a much larger stellar complex, called the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (or Messier 24, catalogued by Charles Messier in 1764). This area is so rich in stars that it is clearly visible to the naked eye during dark nights, in the constellation of Sagittarius.

Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

[nihilist-emier]

The gorgeous Carina Nebula imaged by the VLT Survey Telescope

(Credit: ESO, VPHAS+ Consortium, Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit)

[cosmicdatabase]

The Seagull Nebula, Sharpless 2-296. 📸 ESO/VPHAS+ team/N.J. Wright (Keele University)

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New ESO image captures a dark wolf in the sky

For Halloween, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reveals this spooktacular image of a dark nebula that creates the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colourful cosmic backdrop. Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, it was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile.

Found in the constellation Scorpius, near the centre of the Milky Way on the sky, the Dark Wolf Nebula is located around 5300 light-years from Earth. This image takes up an area in the sky equivalent to four full Moons, but is actually part of an even larger nebula called Gum 55. If you look closely, the wolf could even be a werewolf, its hands ready to grab unsuspecting bystanders…

If you thought that darkness equals emptiness, think again. Dark nebulae are cold clouds of cosmic dust, so dense that they obscure the light of stars and other objects behind them. As their name suggests, they do not emit visible light, unlike other nebulae. Dust grains within them absorb visible light and only let through radiation at longer wavelengths, like infrared light. Astronomers study these clouds of frozen dust because they often contain new stars in the making.

Of course, tracing the wolf’s ghost-like presence in the sky is only possible because it contrasts with a bright background. This image shows in spectacular detail how the dark wolf stands out against the glowing star-forming clouds behind it. The colourful clouds are built up mostly of hydrogen gas and glow in reddish tones excited by the intense UV radiation from the newborn stars within them.

Some dark nebulae, like the Coalsack Nebula, can be seen with the naked eye –– and play a key role in how First Nations interpret the sky [1] –– but not the Dark Wolf. This image was created using data from the VLT Survey Telescope, which is owned by the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy (INAF) and is hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The telescope is equipped with a specially designed camera to map the southern sky in visible light.

The picture was compiled from images taken at different times, each one with a filter letting in a different colour of light. They were all captured during the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), which has studied some 500 million objects in our Milky Way. Surveys like this help scientists to better understand the life cycle of stars within our home galaxy, and the obtained data are made publicly available through the ESO science portal. Explore this treasure trove of data yourself: who knows what other eerie shapes you will uncover in the dark?

Notes

[1] The Mapuche people of south-central Chile refer to the Coalsack Nebula as ‘pozoko’ (water well), and the Incas called it ‘yutu’ (a partridge-like bird).

IMAGE: Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, this cosmic cloud was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Located around 5300 light-years from Earth, the cold clouds of cosmic dust create the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colourful backdrop of glowing gas clouds. Credit ESO/VPHAS+ team

[spaceexp]

Two Hubble Views of the Same Stellar Nursery

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch. April 19, 2018 These NASA Hubble Space Telescope images compare two diverse views of the roiling heart of a vast stellar nursery, known as the Lagoon Nebula. The images, one taken in visible and the other in infrared light, celebrate Hubble’s 28th anniversary in space. The colorful visible-light image at left reveals a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust. This dust-and-gas landscape is being sculpted by powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds unleashed by a monster young star. Located at the center of the photo, the star, known as Herschel 36, is about 200,000 times brighter than our Sun. This hefty star is 32 times more massive and 40,000 times hotter than our Sun. Herschel 36 is still very active because it is young by a star’s standards, only 1 million years old.

Image above: These NASA Hubble Space Telescope images compare two diverse views of the roiling heart of a vast stellar nursery, known as the Lagoon Nebula. The images, one taken in visible and the other in infrared light, celebrate Hubble’s 28th anniversary in space. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, and STScI. The blistering radiation and powerful stellar winds (streams of subatomic particles) are pushing dust away in curtain-like sheets. As the monster star throws off its natal cocoon of material, it is suppressing star formation around it. However, at the dark edges of this dynamic bubble-shaped ecosystem, stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. Dark, elephant-like “trunks” of material represent dense pieces of the cocoon that are resistant to erosion by the searing ultraviolet light and serve as incubators for fledgling stars. A monster young star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun is blasting powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds, carving out a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust.

Image above: This colorful image, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, celebrates the Earth-orbiting observatory’s 28th anniversary of viewing the heavens, giving us a window seat to the universe’s extraordinary tapestry of stellar birth and destruction. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, and STScI. The star-filled image at right, taken by Hubble in near-infrared light, reveals a very different view of the Lagoon Nebula compared to its visible-light portrait. Making infrared observations of the cosmos allows astronomers to penetrate vast clouds of gas and dust to uncover hidden gems. Hubble’s view offers a sneak peek at the dramatic vistas NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will provide.

Lagoon Nebula Zoom and Flythrough

Video above: This video zooms into the core of a rich star-birth region called the Lagoon Nebula, located in the constellation Sagittarius in the direction of our Milky Way galaxy’s central bulge. Video Credits: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon, D. Player, J. DePasquale, F. Summers, and Z. Levay (STScI) Acknowledgement: Fujii, Digitized Sky Survey, ESO/VPHAS, and Crisp. The most obvious difference between Hubble’s infrared and visible photos of this region is the abundance of stars that fill the infrared field of view. Most of them are more distant, background stars located behind the nebula itself. However, some of these pinpricks of light are young stars within the Lagoon Nebula. The giant star Herschel 36, near the center of the frame, shines even brighter in this infrared view. Dark smudges known as Bok globules mark the thickest parts of the nebula, where dust protects still-forming stars and their planets. While Hubble cannot penetrate these dusty clumps, Webb will be able to see through them. VIDEO: The Lagoon Nebula resides 4,000 light-years away. The image shows a region of the nebula measuring about 4 light-years across. The observations were taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 between Feb. 12 and Feb. 18, 2018. For additional images and videos, visit: http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-21 For NASA's Hubble website: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble For Hubble Europe's release: http://www.spacetelescope.org/ For the 1996 Hubble Lagoon Nebula Release: http://hubblesite.org/images/news/release/1996-38 Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Karl Hille/Space Telescope Science Institute/Donna Weaver/Ray Villard. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article

[cavenewstimes]

VST Sees Newborn Stars in Gum 39

Gum 39 is one of several nebulae in a vast stellar nursery called the Running Chicken Nebula (IC 2944), which is located about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus. This VST image shows the nebula Gum 39. Image credit: ESO / VPHAS+ Survey. This image of Gum 39 is actually only a tiny part of a 1.5-billion-pixel image of the Running Chicken Nebula. The data for this gigantic…

[eroslira]

Tortelonnis (en Salt Lake City, Utah) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUx90AUlwv-vpha-iYoC31JI8gGiyoj8q0lmgw0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[iloveveterinary]

New welfare code for laying hens in the UK

New welfare code for laying hens in the UK

The British Veterinary Poultry Association (BVPA), the British Veterinary Association (BVA) and the Veterinary Public Health Association (VPHA) have greeted a “New Code of Practice for the Welfare of Laying Hens and Pullets” in the United Kingdom on June 5th. 

This new code is just the latest in the series of upgraded welfare codesthe British are doing to ensure the health and welfare of their…