in Sculptor

Wow!  Take a look at this beauty of an image from the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope.

What you’re seeing here is a VISTA view of the galaxy NGC 253, a.k.a. the Sculptor Galaxy, found in the constellation Sculptor (visible in Southern Hemisphere skies).  VISTA looked at this galaxy in infrared light, which gave it a great view of the rich collection of dust clouds that thread through the spiral arms of the galaxy. These dust clouds are where star formation takes place.  In fact, NGC 253 is a starburst galaxy, one that has undergone waves of star formation.  Tracing the dust clouds and bursts of starbirth allows astronomers to understand the formation history of the galaxy and the actions that have shaped it into the barred spiral we see today.

The telescope also was able to see a population of cool, red stars that aren’t very visible (if at all) in optical wavelengths of light (which are the main wavelengths our eyes can see).    This is what infrared viewing allows astronomers to do — that is, to peer through the veils of dust that hide the details of the Sculptor Galaxy. Now they can study in deeper detail the myriad of cool red giant stars in the halo that surrounds the galaxy, and measure the composition of some of NGC 253’s small dwarf satellite galaxies. And, they can search for new objects such as globular clusters and ultra-compact dwarf galaxies that would otherwise be invisible without the deep VISTA infrared images.

I remember some years ago when we first started seeing boasts by ground-based observatories that, using new (at the time) technologies such as adaptive optics, astronomers would be able to achieve “near-Hubble” quality observations of such things as the Sculptor Galaxy.  Images like this, from a ground-based observatory in Chile, show that it can be done.  And, the exciting part is that using observatories like this and the newly improved Hubble Space Telescope, our view of the cosmos is only going to get better!