The Very Large Telescope and the Milky Way

Welcome to Three Alpha! Since last time: In the Solar System, the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is sending a jet of material in the Sun’s direction (something which is not unusual for comets); in the Galaxy, a white dwarf has been seen consuming the remains of its planetary system; and in the Universe, JWST has found that early galaxies were more chaotic than in the present day.

Meanwhile, it’s been another very busy couple of weeks for me so I’m afraid the newsletter is taking another break. Please take a moment to enjoy this wonderful photo of the Very Large Telescope (VLT):

Located in Chile, the VLT is actually four telescopes which can be used either individually or together. When used together, the observations of the four telescopes are combined to effectively turn it into one very large telescope via interferometry (a technique more commonly used with radio telescopes) to achieve an extremely high angular resolution.

What is Three Alpha? Other than being the name of the newsletter you’re reading now, the name “three alpha” comes from the triple-alpha process, a nuclear chain reaction in stars which turns helium into carbon. Read more here.

Who writes this? My name is Dr. Adam McMaster. I’m an astronomer in the UK, where I mainly work on finding black holes. You can find me on BlueSky, @adammc.space.

Let me know what you think! You can send comments and feedback by hitting reply or by emailing [email protected].