The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has releasedone of the most accurate and detailed portraitsobtained so farfrom the nearby galaxyMessier 83, considered the “little sister” of the Milky Way. The image, captured with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at theParanal Observatory (Chile), shows the galaxy in infrared light and confirms the incredible power of this camera.
The GalaxyMessier 83It is located about15 million light-years away, on theconstellation Hydra. Its extension reaches more than 40 thousand light-years, only 40 percent the size of the Milky Way, but in many ways it is similar to our galactic home, both for its spiral shape and for the presence of a strip of stars that crosses its center. Messier 83 isfamous among astronomers for its large number of supernovae: the vast explosions with which some stars die. In the last century, six supernovae were observed in Messier 83, a record number that has only been reached by one other galaxy. Even without supernovae, Messier 83 is one of the brightest nearby galaxies that can be seen using binoculars.
Messier 83 has been observed in the infrared part of the spectrum usingHAWK-I, a powerful camera installed on the Very Large Telescope (VLT)of that. When viewed in infrared light, most of the dust that obscures Messier 83 becomes transparent. Thebright gas around hot, young stars, present in spiral arms, also less prominent in infrared images. As a result, the structure of the galaxy, as well as the vast hordes of stars that make it up, can be seen much better.
