ESOcast 139: ALMA​ ​and​ ​the​ ​Cold​ ​Interstellar Clouds Your home and the Universe have at least one thing in common: they can be very dusty places! When you get back after a very long vacation, it may happen that the windows in your home are so full of dust that you can’t see through them anymore. Surprisingly, astronomers have a similar problem! Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

ESOcast 138 Light: VLT Discovers First Interstellar Asteroid is like Nothing Seen Before (4K UHD) For the first time ever astronomers have studied an asteroid that has entered the Solar System from interstellar space. Observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and other observatories around the world show that this unique object was travelling through space for millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system. It appears to be a dark, reddish, highly-elongated rocky or high-metal-content object. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

ESOcast 136 Light: ALMA Discovers Cold Dust Around Nearest Star (4K UHD) The ALMA Observatory in Chile has detected dust around the closest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri. These new observations reveal the glow coming from cold dust in a region between one to four times as far from Proxima Centauri as the Earth is from the Sun. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

ESOcast 135: ​ALMA​ ​is​ ​a​ ​timemachine! How can astrophysicists study the story of the Universe? Billions of years ago, when the Big Bang happened, there was no Milky Way Galaxy, no Solar System, no planet Earth and, especially, no human beings to witness these and all the events that followed. So, how would they know about this stuff? Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →