Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2018

16 SPACE CHRONICLES by ESO T his wonderful image shows the resplendent spiral galaxy NGC 3981 suspended in the inky blackness of space. This galaxy, which lies in the constellation of Crater (the Cup), was imaged in May 2018 using the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). FORS2 is mounted on Unit Telescope 1 (Antu) of the VLT at ESO’s Paranal Observa- tory in Chile. Amongst the host of cutting-edge instruments mounted on the four Unit Telescopes of the VLT, FORS2 stands apart due to its ex- treme versatility. This ”Swiss Army knife” of an instrument is able to study a variety of astronomical ob- jects in many different ways — as well as being capable of producing beautiful images like this one. The sensitive gaze of FORS2 revealed NGC 3981’s spiral arms, strewn with vast streams of dust and star-forming ESO’s FORS2 instrument captures stunning details of spiral galaxy NGC 3981 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2018