ESO Telescope Captures Stunning First-Ever Shot Of A Star Outside The Milky Way

Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI) took the first close-up image of a dying star outside of the Milky Way. The newly imaged star, WH G64, is located within the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the smaller galaxies that orbit the Milky Way.

While the James Webb Space Telescope has garnered much of the attention when it comes to new images of deep space, ground-based telescopes such as ESO’s VLT refuse to be put out to pasture. And why should it, when it is still capable of delivering images such as the one of a dying star some 160,000 light years from Earth.

“For the first time, we have succeeded in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way,” remarked Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile.

Ohnaka added ...