Very Large Telescope

The incredibly rare family portrait highlights two baby exoplanets orbiting a very young, sun-like star.

With its clear, dark skies, northern Chile is home to two fifths of the world's astronomical infrastructure, but could that be under threat with increasing urbanisation and mining development?

Astronomers have created the 1st 3D weather map for an exoplanet 900 light-years away. This hot Jupiter has powerful winds! The post Our 1st 3D weather map from a distant exoplanet first appeared on EarthSky.

"It feels like something out of science fiction."

Black holes can actively regulate the material they consume, using powerful jets of gas blasted into space, according to a new study. It suggests many such cosmic beasts effectively "cook" their own meals.

Observatories in Chile's Atacama Desert, including the world's largest optical telescope, could be blinded by light pollution and other unwanted side effects from the proposed construction of a renewable energy megaproject

A new image from ESO's Very Large Telescope provides what these astronomers called "our clearest view yet" of a filament in the cosmic web. The post A filament of the cosmic web! Clearest image yet first appeared on EarthSky.

Astronomers have taken a crucial step in showing that the most massive black holes in the universe can create their own meals. Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray

Observations of WASP-127b, a giant gas exoplanet more than 500 light years from Earth, suggest it has phenomenally high wind speeds

What's hotter than the hottest stars in the Universe?. Here in our Universe, stars shine brightly, providing light and heat to planets, moons, and more. But some objects get even hotter, by far..

European Southern Observatory Director General Xavier Barcons told Space.com that astronomers expect the project to brighten the sky by up to 10 percent around the observatory. Such...

Stars are born, live and die in spectacular ways, with their deaths marked by one of the biggest known explosions in the Universe. Like a campfire needs wood to keep burning, a star relies on nuclear fusion — primarily using hydrogen as fuel — to generate energy and counteract the crushing force of ...

This totally changes what we though we knew about black holes.

Gliese 229 B - the first-known brown dwarf - is really a binary system of two brown dwarfs entwined in an incredibly close orbit. See their orbit here! The post After 29 years, first-known brown dwarf revealed as twins first appeared on EarthSky.

Astronomers with NASA and Caltech have found that a volcanic exomoon may be producing a cloud of sodium gas near a giant exoplanet 635 light-years away. The post Is there a volcanic exomoon orbiting this giant exoplanet? first appeared on EarthSky.

An exoplanet has been discovered orbiting the nearest single star to Earth (apart from the Sun), only 6 light-years away.

An exoplanet at least half the mass of Venus orbits Barnard's star, the closest single star to the Sun, once every 3.15 days.

Scientists observed a distant galaxy's dramatic brightening, which suggests a black hole waking up and offering new cosmic insights.

The Gum 3 nebula, which resembles a swimming koi fish, is captured in a stunning new photo from the European Southern Observatory's VLT Survey Telescope.

Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) have produced this beautiful image of the gas cloud Gum 46.