Astronomy Picture of the Day
Image Credit &
Copyright:
José Rodrigues
Explanation:
The core of the Milky Way
is rising beyond the Chilean mountain-top
La Silla
Observatory in this
deep night skyscape.
Seen toward the constellation Sagittarius, our home galaxy's center
is flanked on the left, by the European Southern Observatory's New
Technology Telescope which pioneered the use of active optics to
accurately control the shape of large telescope mirrors.
To the right stands the ESO 3.6-meter Telescope,
home of the exoplanet hunting
HARPS
and
NIRPS
spectrographs.
Between them, the
galaxy's central bulge
is filled with obscuring
clouds of interstellar dust, bright stars,
clusters, and nebulae.
Prominent reddish hydrogen emission from the star-forming
Lagoon Nebula, M8, is near center.
The Trifid Nebula, M20, combines blue light of a dusty reflection nebula
with reddish emission just left of the cosmic Lagoon.
Both are popular
stops on telescopic tours of the galactic center.
The composited image
is a stack of separate exposures for ground
and sky made in April 2023, all captured consecutively
with the same framing and camera equipment.