Fifteen Years of the Very Large Telescope

This selection of images — one per year in the life of the VLT — gives a taste of its huge scope and scientific productivity since first light in May 1998. The images are as follows: 1998: NGC 1232 (eso9845), 1999: NGC 3603 (eso9946), 2000: Messier 104, the Sombrero Galaxy (eso0007), 2001: Messier 16 in the infrared (eso0142), 2002: the Horsehead Nebula (eso0202), 2003: NGC 613 (eso0338), 2004: first candidate exoplanet image (eso0428), 2005: NGC 1097 center (eso0534), 2006: NGC 1313 (eso0643), 2007: ESO 593-IG 008 (eso0755), 2008: center of the Milky Way (eso0846), 2009: the Jewel Box cluster (eso0940), 2010: Messier 17 in the infrared (potw1044a), 2011: the Eyes galaxies (eso1131), 2012: the Carina Nebula in the infrared (eso1208) and 2013: IC 2944 (eso1322).

Image credits: ESO/P.D. Barthel/M. McCaughrean/M. Andersen/S. Gillessen et al./Y. Beletsky/R. Chini/T. Preibisch

Note: For more information, see ESO's Very Large Telescope Celebrates 15 Years of Success.

The Running Chicken Nebula

This new image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope shows the Running Chicken Nebula, a cloud of gas and newborn stars that lies around 6500 light-years away from us in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). Officially called IC 2944, or the Lambda Centauri Nebula, its strange nickname comes from the bird-like shape of its brightest region. The star Lambda Centauri itself lies just outside the field of view.

Photo credit: ESO

Notes: The Minister has blogged about the Running Chicken Nebula before; see Chasing Chickens in the Lambda Centauri Nebula. For more information, see An Angry Bird in the Sky.

Chasing Chickens in the Lambda Centauri Nebula

This infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, shows the Lambda Centauri nebula, a star-forming cloud in our Milky Way galaxy, also known as the Running Chicken Nebula. The nebula, cataloged as IC 2944, is about 5,800 light-years from Earth and is home to a new cluster of stars born from the cloud nearly 8 million years ago. The hottest members of the cluster produce enough ultraviolet radiation and strong winds to convert the cloud into ions and excavate it. The ionized gas glows in visible light, but in infrared light we see the dust in the cloud warmed by the very same radiation. The red, glowing dust is the coolest material visible in this image and is composed of metallic dust grains. The greenish components in the image are warmer dust grains composed of smog-like materials. The large green ring-like structure near the middle of the image is some 77 light-years across and was formed when materials that created the stars in the clusters were blown back by the combined winds of the stars.

The nebula gets its common name because in some visible light images it resembles a running chicken. It is also called the Lambda Centauri Nebula because it appears to surround the bright star Lambda Centauri. Lambda Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the constellation Centaurus. The brightest stars in the sky are named based on the constellation they are in. For example, the brightest star in the constellation Centaurus is Alpha Centauri, the next brightest star in that constellation is Beta Centauri, and so forth. Lambda Centauri is therefore the 11th brightest star in the constellation Centaurus. It is not so bright in infrared light, however. In this WISE image, it appears as the dimmer, lower, and bluer of two bright stars in the upper right-hand corner of the image. It is a blue giant star about 410 light-years away. So, in fact, Lambda Centauri is much closer to Earth than IC 2944 and has nothing to do with the nebula at all.

This image is a four-color composite created by all four of WISE's infrared detectors. Color is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light observed at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is mostly light from stars. Green and red represent light observed at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm dust, with red indicating temperatures lower than green.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA