Fermi’s Large Area Telescope resolved high-energy gamma rays from an extended region around the active galaxy Centaurus A. The emission corresponds to million-light-year-wide radio-emitting gas thrown out by the galaxy’s supersized black hole. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope maps gamma rays, radiation that typically packs 100 billion times the energy of radio waves. Nevertheless, and to the surprise of many Read more »

VISTA (the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy), a new telescope, has just started work at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. VISTA is a survey telescope working at infrared wavelengths and is the world’s largest telescope dedicated to mapping the sky. Its large mirror, wide field of view and very sensitive detectors will reveal Read more »

Ever heard about a Cannibal galaxy? Read on to find out more about an interesting galaxy that eats other galaxies! A new technique using near-infrared images, obtained with ESO’s 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT), allows astronomers to see through the opaque dust lanes of the giant cannibal galaxy Centaurus A, unveiling its “last meal” in unprecedented detail — a smaller Read more »

Earlier this week, a team of astronomers, who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), the spectrograph for ESO’s 3.6-metre telescope, announced the discovery of 32 new exoplanets. The announcement was made at an international ESO/CAUP exoplanet conference in Porto. Exoplanets are planets outside of our Solar System. HARPS is considered as the world’s foremost exoplanet hunter. Over Read more »