This deep space photo is, undoubtedly, beautiful, but it’s also something else: a view of space no one has ever seen before.
The picture comes from the European Southern Observatory’s ultra-powerful and very aptly-named Very Large Telescope. It took over 27 hours for the telescope’s MUSE instrument to snap the photo. But it was time well-spent — according to ESO they can now see at least 2o objects that were previously unseen even by Hubble’s exceptionally powerful eye, plus get a better idea of how some previously-known galaxies are situated.
You can see how they did it, and learn a little more about the MUSE instrument, in the video below:
Image: ESO/MUSE Consortium/R. Bacon
