Very Large Telescope (VLT)
Images of 42 of the Biggest Asteroids in the Solar System
A huge team of astronomers have combined forces to use the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) to…
Climate Change is Making the Atmosphere Worse for Astronomy
Modern astronomical telescopes are extraordinarly powerful. And we keep making them more powerful. With telescopes like the Extremely Large Telescope…
New Images of the “Golf Ball” Asteroid Pallas
New images of the asteroid Pallas (the clearest and most detailed to date) reveal that it looks like a "golf…
Astronomers Find a Galaxy Containing Three Supermassive Black Holes at the Center
NGC 6240 is a puzzle to astronomers. For a long time, astronomers thought the galaxy is a result of a…
Asteroid 2006 QV89 Now Has a 0% Chance of Hitting Earth in September
Why report on an asteroid that has no chance of hitting Earth? Because this asteroid, known as 2006 QV89, has…
A double asteroid came uncomfortably close this weekend. Here’s what astronomers saw
Using the Very Large Telescope, a team of ESO scientists took some stunningly clear images of a double asteroid that…
Astronomers See Adorable Baby Planets Forming Around a Young Star
370 light years away from us, a solar system is making baby planets. The star at the center of it…
Bad News. Planets Orbiting Red Dwarfs Might not have the Raw Materials for Life
New research from the Hubble Space Telescope and the ESO's Very Large Telescope is dampening some of the enthusiasm in…
The Saturn Nebula Kind of Looks Like the Planet in a Small Telescope, But in One of the Most Powerful Telescopes on Earth, it Looks Like This
Saturn is an icon. There's nothing else like it in the Solar System, and it's something even children recognize. But…
Direct Observations of a Planet Orbiting a Star 63 Light-Years Away
Using the Very Large Telescope, a team of ESO astronomers directly observed Beta Pictoris b over the course of four…