The Wide-Field-Imager, an advanced CCD camera on the MPG/ESO
2.2-m telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory (Chile), has produced
another splendid colour picture – this time of the famous Tarantula
Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Located at a distance of about 170,000 light-years in this
satellite galaxy to the Milky Way system, the Tarantula Nebula is
full of beautiful objects – stars of different ages, bright and dark
clouds of different shapes and stellar clusters. The new photo covers
a field as large as the full moon and displays a large number of
them.
The full-scale photo (14a/02; 4500 x 4500 pixels) and six
smaller fields (all of them also in smaller, preview- versions for
easy transfer) can now be seen at:
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/phot-14-02.html
Last month, ESO and EAAE announced the joint educational project
"Catch a Star!", mainly directed towards students in
Europe’s high schools. Despite the present busy period of
end-of-the-schoolyear exams, about 100 groups with more than 300
participants from a dozen countries have already chosen ‘their’
object and have registered with the programme. You will find more
details and also the status (frequently updated) at:
http://www.eso.org/outreach/eduoff/catchastar/
Two images obtained with the 8.2-m VLT ANTU telescope have just
featured as "Astronomy Picture of the Day" on June 5 and 7,
2002, respectively. Look at:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020605.html and
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020607.html
