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ESO 02/09 - Associated Images

19 January 2009
For Immediate Release

Frantic activity revealed in dusty stellar factories

NGC 253 is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in the sky, and also one of the dustiest. The whole galaxy is shown here as observed with the WFI instrument, while the insert shows a close-up of the central parts as observed with the NACO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope and the ACS on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This unique set of observations has allowed a team of astronomers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Spain) to study the galaxy in great detail, uncovering many young, massive and dusty stellar nurseries. They also found that the centre of this galaxy appears to harbour a twin of our own Milky Way's supermassive black hole.
Credit: ESO

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Close-up of the central regions of the starburst galaxy NGC 253. This image is based on data obtained with the NACO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the ACS on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Thanks to the VLT's sharp eye, astronomers have identified 37 bright regions, a threefold increase on previous results. These regions are probably very active nurseries that contain as many as one hundred thousand young, massive stars bursting from their dusty cocoons. The field of view is 15 arcseconds.
Credit: ESO

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Measuring 70 000 light-years across and lying 13 million light-years away, the nearly edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 253 is revealed here in an image from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) of the MPG/ESO 2.2 m telescope at the La Silla Observatory. The image is based on data obtained through four different filters (R, V, H-alpha and OIII). North is up and East to the left. The field of view is 30 arcminutes.
Credit: ESO

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ESO PR Video 02a/09
Zooming into NGC 253

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Lying only 13 million light-years away from us, the spiral galaxy NGC 253 is one of the brightest in the sky. This sequence zooms into this nearly edge-on galaxy, starting with a "naked-eye" very wide-angle view, and then plunging into its heart, where a team of astronomers from Instituto de Astrofisíca de Canarias (Spain) discovered many young, massive and very dusty stellar nurseries. The sequence then blends from the visible light into a very high resolution composite of NACO images obtained with the VLT in the infrared, together with an ACS image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In the final image, the stellar nurseries appear as reddish blobs near the centre of the Galaxy.
Credit: ESO, NASA/ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2 and A. Fujii

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