SN 1987A was a type II supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It occurred approximately 51.4 kiloparsecs from Earth and was the closest observed supernova since Kepler's Supernova. 1987A's light reached Earth on February 23, 1987, and as the earliest supernova discovered that year, was labeled "1987A". Its brightness peaked in May, with an apparent magnitude of about 3.
The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. The common name comes from William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, who observed the object in 1842 using a 36-inch (91 cm) telescope and produced a drawing that looked somewhat like a crab. The nebula was discovered by English astronomer John Bevis in 1731. It corresponds with a bright supernova recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054 as a guest star. The nebula was the first astronomical object identified that corresponds with a historically-observed supernova explosion.
The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 member states for ground-based astronomy. Created in 1962, ESO has provided astronomers with state-of-the-art research facilities and access to the southern sky. The organisation employs over 750 staff members and receives annual member state contributions of approximately €162 million. Its observatories are located in northern Chile.
The Trifid Nebula is an H II region in the north-west of Sagittarius in a star-forming region in the Milky Way's Scutum-Centaurus Arm. It was discovered by Charles Messier on June 5, 1764. Its name means 'three-lobe'. The object is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula, a reflection nebula, and a dark nebula. Viewed through a small telescope, the Trifid Nebula is a bright and peculiar object, and is thus a perennial favorite of amateur astronomers.
The Tarantula Nebula is a large H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), forming its south-east corner.
The Eagle Nebula is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745–46. Both the "Eagle" and the "Star Queen" refer to visual impressions of the dark silhouette near the center of the nebula, an area made famous as the "Pillars of Creation" imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the aforementioned Pillars of Creation. The Eagle Nebula lies in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way.
The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a (M51a) or NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. It is between 23 and 31 million light-years away and 76,900 ly (23,580 pc) in diameter.
The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) is a telescope located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is housed in an enclosure immediately adjacent to the four Very Large Telescope (VLT) Unit Telescopes on the summit of Cerro Paranal. The VST is a wide-field survey telescope with a field of view twice as broad as the full Moon. It is the largest telescope in the world designed to exclusively survey the sky in visible light.
The VISTA is a wide-field reflecting telescope with a 4.1 metre mirror, located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. It is operated by the European Southern Observatory and started science operations in December 2009. VISTA was conceived and developed by a consortium of universities in the United Kingdom led by Queen Mary University of London and became an in-kind contribution to ESO as part of the UK's accession agreement, with the subscription paid by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
In astronomy, Bok globules are isolated and relatively small dark nebulae, containing dense cosmic dust and gas from which star formation may take place. Bok globules are found within H II regions, and typically have a mass of about 2 to 50 solar masses contained within a region about a light year or so across (about 4.5×1047 m3). They contain molecular hydrogen (H2), carbon oxides and helium, and around 1% (by mass) silicate dust. Bok globules most commonly result in the formation of double- or multiple-star systems.
The Cygnus Loop is a large supernova remnant (SNR) in the constellation Cygnus, an emission nebula measuring nearly 3° across. Some arcs of the loop, known collectively as the Veil Nebula or Cirrus Nebula, emit in the visible electromagnetic range. Radio, infrared, and X-ray images reveal the complete loop.
The Vela supernova remnant is a supernova remnant in the southern constellation Vela. Its source Type II supernova exploded approximately 11,000 years ago. The association of the Vela supernova remnant with the Vela pulsar, made by astronomers at the University of Sydney in 1968, was direct observational evidence that supernovae form neutron stars.
The Gum Nebula is an emission nebula that extends across 36° in the southern constellations Vela and Puppis. It lies approximately 450 parsecs from the Earth. Hard to distinguish, it was widely believed to be the greatly expanded remains of a supernova that took place about a million years ago. More recent research suggests it may be an evolved H II region. It contains the 11,000-year-old Vela Supernova Remnant, along with the Vela Pulsar.
IC 2944, also known as the Running Chicken Nebula, the Lambda Centauri Nebula or the λ Centauri Nebula, is an open cluster with an associated emission nebula found in the constellation Centaurus, near the star λ Centauri. It features Bok globules, which are frequently a site of active star formation. However, no evidence for star formation has been found in any of the globules in IC 2944. Other designations for IC 2944 include RCW 62, G40 and G42.
NGC 2023 is an emission and reflection nebula in the equatorial constellation of Orion. It was discovered by the German-born astronomer William Herschel on 6 January 1785. This reflection nebula is one of the largest in the sky, with a size of 10 × 10 arcminutes. It is located at a distance of 1,300 ly (400 pc) from the Sun, and is positioned ~15′ to the northeast of the Horsehead Nebula.
Lyman-alpha blob 1 (LAB-1) is a giant cosmic cloud of gas located in the constellation of Aquarius, approximately 11.5 billion light-years from Earth with a redshift (z) of 3.09. It was discovered unexpectedly in 2000 by Charles Steidel and colleagues, who were surveying for high-redshift galaxies using the 200 inch Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory. The researchers had been investigating the abundance of galaxies in the young Universe when they came across two objects which would become known as Lyman-alpha blobs—huge concentrations of gases emitting the Lyman-alpha emission line of hydrogen.
Vela Molecular Ridge is a molecular cloud complex in the constellations Vela and Puppis. Radio 12CO observations of the region showed the ridge to be composed of several clouds, each with masses 100,000–1,000,000 M☉. This cloud complex lies on the sky in the direction of the Gum Nebula (foreground) and the Carina–Sagittarius Spiral Arm (background). The most important clouds in the region are identified by the letters A, B, C and D, and in fact belong to two different complexes: the clouds A, C and D are located at an average distance of about 700-1000 parsecs and are related to the OB association Vela R2, while cloud B is located at a greater distance, up to 2000 parsecs away, and is physically connected to the extended Vela OB1 association.
