A 3-D view of remote galaxies
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 - 21:07
in Astronomy & Space
For decades, distant galaxies that emitted their light six billion years ago were no more than small specks of light on the sky. With the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in the early 1990s, astronomers were able to scrutinise the structure of distant galaxies in some detail for the first time. Under the superb skies of Paranal, the VLT's FLAMES/GIRAFFE spectrograph - which obtains simultaneous spectra from small areas of extended objects - can now also resolve the motions of the gas in these distant galaxies.