The Cool Glow of Star Formation

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The Cool Glow of Star Formation

First Light of Powerful New Camera on APEX

A new instrument called ArTeMiS has been successfully installed on APEX — the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment. APEX is a 12-metre diameter telescope located high in the Atacama Desert, which operates at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths — between infrared light and radio waves in the electromagnetic spectrum — providing a valuable tool for astronomers to peer further into the Universe. The new camera has already delivered a spectacularly detailed view of the Cat’s Paw Nebula.

ArTeMiS is a new wide-field submillimetre-wavelength camera that will be a major addition to APEX’s suite of instruments and further increase the depth and detail that can be observed. The new generation detector array of ArTeMIS acts more like a CCD camera than the previous generation of detectors. This will let wide-field maps of the sky be made faster and with many more pixels.

Source

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Zooming in on ArTeMiS’s view of the Cat’s Paw Nebula NGC 6334

In this zoom sequence we start with a spectacular wide-field view of the Milky Way Galaxy, centred on the constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius. As we close in on the Cat’s Paw Nebula (NGC 6334) we shift to the view from the VISTA survey telescope, observing in the infrared part of the spectrum. And finally we add a new view of the region taken at submillimetre wavelengths using the new ArTeMiS camera on the APEX telescope.

Credit: ArTeMiS team/Ph. André, M. Hennemann, V. Revéret et al./Digitized Sky Survey 2/J. Emerson/VISTA/S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard)/S.Brunier. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit. Music: movetwo

Source: ESO Observatory

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Cross-fading between infrared VISTA and submillimetre ArTeMiS views of NGC 6334

This video compares the near-infrared and submillimetre views of the star formation region NGC 6334, also known as the Cat’s Paw Nebula. The new ArTeMiS submillimetre camera on APEX, located close to ALMA on the Chajnantor Plateau, picks up the glow coming from deep within the dust clouds. The near infrared view comes from the VISTA survey telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.

Credit: ArTeMiS team/Ph. André, M. Hennemann, V. Revéret et al./ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit.

Source: ESO Observatory