Cerro Paranal, in the high, dry, Atacama desert in Chile, is where some of the best astronomy in the world is done. It’s graced with incredibly dark and steady skies, and a view of the southern hemisphere skies that, frankly, makes me jealous.

So it’s hard to argue with the title of this short time lapse video, An Astronomer’s Paradise:

This was taken by photographer Babak Tafreshi, who alerted me that he had put it online. Watch it to 1:30 in if only to watch Orion rise — upside down, to my northern hemisphere bias! — with colors and texture that are simply stunning.

Isn’t that awesome? And then a few seconds later, he shows a still image of the great Carina Nebula with the four domes of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer silhouetted against the sky. You can get a better look at that at The World At Night website, which has amazing shots of the sky.

I hope someday to make a trip to this part of the world. To see this for myself…

Credit: Babak Tafreshi

Not that any time lapse video of the Very Large Telescope complex at Paranal in Chile would be normal, but this one by Farid Char caught something pretty unusual: what appears to be a Chinese rocket boosting a satellite to orbit!

Did you catch it? From 14 – 18 seconds in, you can see it as a bright object moving against the setting stars to the west. If you pause the video, you can see what look like two plumes of gas coming from the object (though I wonder; a cone-shaped plume might look like this too seen from the side due to limb-brightening). Given the time, it was most likely the Chinese satellite FengYun 2-F moving into its transfer orbit (or possibly just venting some fuel), and it will slowly boost itself to a final geosynchronous orbit over the next few weeks.

These time lapse videos are always pretty cool, but they’re even better when they get a surprise like this!

Tip o’ the lens cap to eundas on Twitter.

After having recently posted an interesting picture of the results of star formation in a nearby galaxy, here’s another example, but far closer: an incredibly detailed image of the heart of the Omega Nebula, where stars are being born from huge clouds of gas and dust:

[Click to ennebulenate, or grab an even bigger version.]

This image was taken using the 8.2 meter Antu telescope, one of four making up the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. What you’re seeing here is the central region of a much larger complex of gas and dust located about 6500 light years away toward the center of our galaxy. The whole thing is about 20 light years across, and perhaps as many as 1000 stars are in the process of being born or were recently formed there.

The red color is due to the presence of warm hydrogen gas, the basic building material of stars. It’s being lit up and is glowing due to very young, massive and hot stars — the alpha dogs, if you will — flooding the nebula with ultraviolet light. The dark material is actually dust, which is opaque in visible light, so it blocks the glow from material behind it.

That dust really caught my eye: some of it is not shapeless and random, but has been sculpted into very long, very thin wisps and tendrils. Most of these are parallel, which is a big clue to what causes them. They are most likely being shaped this way by shock waves; supersonic material blasted out from those same young, hot stars. These powerful stellar winds of subatomic material race out and slam into the surrounding material, compressing it. Waves from various stars can also collide, creating very thin streamers like this. Some are so narrow they’re barely resolved in the picture at all.

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The pictures of Comet Lovejoy keep coming, each cooler than the one before. It’s hard to imagine topping the ones from the Space Station, but then you don’t have to imagine it when you can just look at this crazy amazing shot:

Holy Haleakala! [Click to stimulatedemissionate.]

Well, actually, "Holy Paranal!" This picture, by Gabriel Brammer, was taken at the Very Large Telescope observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama desert in Chile, and it’s just stunning. The comet is obvious enough — you can still see the two tails — and the crescent Moon, somewhat overexposed, on the left. On the right is the VLT itself, firing a laser into the sky. The laser makes atoms high in the atmosphere glow, creating an artificial star that can be used to compensate for turbulence in the air, creating sharper images.

I love how the Milky Way is splitting the sky. You can see the dark hole of the Coal Sack, a thick dust cloud that absorbs the star light from behind it, and the Southern Cross in the middle of the frame. The two bright stars just below that are Alpha and Beta Centauri, the former being the closest star system to our own. The southern hemisphere gets a better view of the galaxy than we northerners do, since the geometry of the Earth’s tilt puts the center of the Milky Way higher up for them. I’m jealous enough just because of that, but to have this incredible comet visible too? Curse you antipodeans!

[UPDATE: The ESO has added a nice time lapse video to the mix, using Brammer's photos:

Sigh. So lovely.]

If you’re south of the Equator, the comet will be visible in the east before sunrise for a few more days at least. If you can, go take a look. Comets like this are extremely rare, and you may never get another chance like this again.

Image credit: Gabriel Brammer/European Southern Observatory

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Monday spiral, so here’s a great example of one: the nearby beauty M96.

[Click to oooh-and-ahhhhhenate.]

There’s some nifty stuff here. M96 is about 36 million light years away — relatively close by, for a big galaxy — and is part of a small group of galaxies called (can you guess?) the M96 Group. This is a small collection of a dozen or so galaxies, much like the small group of galaxies to which we belong, called (can you guess that one?) the Local Group. M96 is about the same size as our galaxy, too: roughly 100,000 light years across.

The spiral shape is not as symmetric as usually seen in these types of galaxies, and that’s almost certainly due to gravitational interactions with the other galaxies in the group (which are spread out enough not to be seen in this close-up). You can see lots of dark dust swirling around the center of the galaxy, blocking the light from stars behind it. You can see more on the right than on the left, indicating the right side of this galaxy is the side of the galaxy nearer to us. But that top looping arm is way out of proportion to the other side of the galaxy, so it’s probably been tugged out due to the other galaxies in the group. You can see clumpy regions of blue along its length; that’s where stars are being born, blasting out lots of ultraviolet light and causing the surrounding gas to glow.

I think my favorite part of this picture, though, is the reddish edge-on spiral galaxy located in the upper left, almost perfectly aligned with the spiral arm of M96! This is certainly a coincidence; the edge-on galaxy is probably much farther away. The red tinge to it supports that idea; dust in the arm of M96 would absorb bluer light from the more distant galaxy, letting the red light through.

Measuring its size off my screen, I get that it’s about 1/5th the length of M96. If it’s the same size physically as M96, then it’s probably 5 or so times farther away, maybe 150 – 200 million light years off. That’s actually a pretty good distance away. Yet in this image details can still be seen; that’s the advantage of using the colossal 8-meter mirror on the Very Large Telescope! You can still get a pretty clear picture of fantastically distant objects, even when they’re partially obscured by foreground objects.

And you get a gorgeous picture out of it, too.

Image credit: ESO/Oleg Maliy

No, don’t fret: I’m not betraying everything I know to be true and suddenly supporting astrology! I’m just having a little joke at the expense of NGC 4435 and 4438, two galaxies in the Virgo Cluster known as "The Eyes", and seen in lovely detail by the Very Large Telescope:

[Click for orbus giganticus, and you really should; the details are beautiful.]

Clearly, these guys know each other. NGC 4438 (upper left) is distorted and drawn out, which is a sure bet that it’s undergone a collision with another galaxy in the recent past. Given how close NGC 4435 (lower right) is to it, that seems like the culprit (though M86, not seen in this shot, is also close by and may be to blame). They may have actually passed right through each other as recently as 100 million years ago! Direct hits between galaxies aren’t like car accidents where the vehicles stop dead; galaxies are mostly empty space, and stars are so small compared to the galaxies themselves that a direct impact between two stars is incredibly unlikely.

But the gravitational pulls from the opposing galaxies can affect each other, teasing out long tails of material just like the one streaming from NGC 4438 . The scattering of dust is also another clue. Although stars don’t collide, gas clouds are much larger, some dozens of light years across. Those do in fact slam into each other, causing them to collapse and form stars (though there’s some evidence that’s not always the case). Vigorous star formation can cause lots of dust to be created, and that’s what we’re seeing in NGC 4438. And it’s all weird and distorted too, clinching the case.

You may notice NGC 4435 is a bit featureless. That’s actually common in disk galaxies that live in clusters. As they move through the cluster at high speed, the intergalactic medium — thin gas expelled from the galaxies — can strip away the gas and dust in a galaxy, like opening a car window can blow out stale air inside.

Galaxy collisions are pretty cool, and a rich field for study. And if you’re patient, you’ll get a great view of one: our galaxy is headed for a close encounter with the Andromeda Galaxy. Given that it and the Milky Way are among the biggest and most massive spiral galaxies in the local Universe, it’ll be a spectacular show. Better reserve your seats now, though. You only have a billion or two years to wait!