Part of the VVV view of the bulge of the Milky Way from ESO's VISTA

This large star-filled picture is a tiny part of the VVV survey conducted by ESO’s VISTA infrared survey telescope. It shows a patch of sky in the direction of the centre of the Milky Way and includes many thousands of stars that form part of the Milky Way bulge. The star catalogues from the VVV survey have been used to map out the shape of the bulge more accurately than ever before.

Click here to download the original 512 MB file. Then get ready to have your mind blown.

View of the Galactic centre captured with ESO's VISTA infrared survey telescope, as part of the Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) ESO public survey.

Image of the Virgo cluster of galaxies taken with the Palomar Observatory 48-inch Schmidt telescope as part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 is seen in the centre, while Messier 84 and 86 are the two bright galaxies forming part of the small group on the centre right of the image. New observations obtained with ESO’s Very Large Telescope have shown that the halo of stars around Messier 87 has been truncated, possibly because of some interaction with Messier 84. The observations also reveal that Messier 87 and 86 are moving towards each other.

Click here to download full size 361 MB image. It’s amazing.

The Fornax Galaxy Cluster is one of the closest such groupings beyond our own Local Group of galaxies. This visible-light wide-field image of the cluster was created from photographs taken through red and blue filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The field of view is approximately three degrees across.

Click here to download the full size 320 MB file. It’s breathtaking.

This image shows a pair of interacting galaxies known as Arp 271. Individually, these galaxies are named NGC 5426 and NGC 5427; both are spirals, and both are roughly the same size.

Some astronomers believe that these galaxies are in the process of merging to form a single entity. This interaction will create increasing numbers of new stars over the next few million years, some of which can be seen within the “bridge” of gas connecting the two galaxies. This kind of collision and interaction might also happen to our own galaxy, the Milky Way, which is likely to collide with the neighbouring Andromeda Galaxy in about five billion years time.

These galaxies lie over 120 million light years away from us, and were discovered by the German-British astronomer William Herschel in 1785. Herschel was a prolific scientist, also discovering both infrared radiation and the planet Uranus.

Click here to download full sized image.

For more amazing images, visit: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1339c/