File:A silent watcher (potw2412a).jpg
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[edit]DescriptionA silent watcher (potw2412a).jpg |
English: This Picture of the Week shows the stunning night sky over the Swedish–ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. Until its retirement in 2003, SEST used its 15-metre main dish to observe the cold gas clouds where stars form. Now the telescope, perching at 2375 metres altitude, watches silently over the landscape of the Atacama Desert.While SEST stands in one of the darkest places on the planet, the sky itself isn’t completely black — rather the opposite! Here, besides thousands of stars, the picture features shades of red and green across the sky — an atmospheric phenomenon called airglow. In the bottom-left part of the sky we can see a portion of the band of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, and in the top half, two cloud-like structures that look like galactic fireworks. These are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, trapped by its gravity. They are visible to the naked eye and have been known since ancient times to indigenous peoples in the Southern Hemisphere, who often compared them with water ponds or even animals like pigs or tapirs.In this picture, there is even a shooting star coming by to say hello to SEST. Can you spot it in the sky? |
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Date | 18 March 2024 (upload date) | ||
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Author | ESO/A. Ghizzi Panizza (www.albertoghizzipanizza.com) | ||
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This media was created by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Their website states: "Unless specifically noted, the images, videos, and music distributed on the public ESO website, along with the texts of press releases, announcements, pictures of the week, blog posts and captions, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided the credit is clear and visible." To the uploader: You must provide a link (URL) to the original file and the authorship information if available. |
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current | 07:16, 18 March 2024 | ![]() | 5,504 × 8,256 (12.05 MB) | OptimusPrimeBot (talk | contribs) | #Spacemedia - Upload of https://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/large/potw2412a.jpg via Commons:Spacemedia |
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Credit/Provider | ESO/A. Ghizzi Panizza (www.albertoghizzipanizza.com) |
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Source | European Southern Observatory |
Author | ALBERTO GHIZZI PANIZZA |
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Date and time of data generation | 06:00, 18 March 2024 |
JPEG file comment | This Picture of the Week shows the stunning night sky over the Swedish–ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. Until its retirement in 2003, SEST used its 15-metre main dish to observe the cold gas clouds where stars form. Now the telescope, perching at 2375 metres altitude, watches silently over the landscape of the Atacama Desert. While SEST stands in one of the darkest places on the planet, the sky itself isn’t completely black — rather the opposite! Here, besides thousands of stars, the picture features shades of red and green across the sky — an atmospheric phenomenon called airglow. In the bottom-left part of the sky we can see a portion of the band of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, and in the top half, two cloud-like structures that look like galactic fireworks. These are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, trapped by its gravity. They are visible to the naked eye and have been known since ancient times to indigenous peoples in the Southern Hemisphere, who often compared them with water ponds or even animals like pigs or tapirs. In this picture, there is even a shooting star coming by to say hello to SEST. Can you spot it in the sky? |
Serial number of camera | 6002916 |
Lens used | NIKKOR Z 20mm f/1.8 S |
Software used | ACDSee Ultimate 2023 |
Date and time of digitizing | 22:31, 10 December 2022 |
Rating (out of 5) | 0 |
File change date and time | 20:33, 8 January 2023 |
Date metadata was last modified | 20:33, 8 January 2023 |
Unique ID of original document | 1C3542BBFD17EC396C4B9222283E8E39 |
Keywords | Swedish–ESO Submillimetre Telescope |
Contact information |
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2 Garching bei München, None, D-85748 Germany |