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This shows how a plane electron wave and a magnetic charge interact, forming an electron vortex state that carries orbital angular momentum.

NASA's InSight spacecraft, its heat shield and its parachute were imaged on Dec. 6 and 11 by the HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The tunneling leakage is a major quantum obstacle which hinders further miniaturization of electronic devices. To explore the miniaturization limits of molecular electronics, the oligo(aryleneethynylene) (OAE) molecules were employed to investigate the transition between through-space tunneling and molecular tunneling. For the shortest OAE molecule, the intrinsic single-molecule charge transport can be outstripped from tunneling leakage at 0.66 nm, suggesting the potential to push the miniaturization limit of molecular electronic devices to the angstrom scale.

(a) (left) Previously proposed quantum circuit. (b) (right) New parallelized quantum circuit. In (b), the complexity of the circuit is reduced drastically.

This is an artists impression of spin-orbit coupling of atom qubits.

Photocathode after its production in the preparatory system.

Deep observations made with the MUSE spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have uncovered vast cosmic reservoirs of atomic hydrogen surrounding distant galaxies. The exquisite sensitivity of MUSE allowed for direct observations of dim clouds of hydrogen glowing with Lyman-alpha emission in the early Universe — revealing that almost the whole night sky is invisibly aglow.

FORS2, an instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, has observed the spiral galaxy NGC 3981 in all its glory. The image was captured as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems Programme, which makes use of the rare occasions when observing conditions are not suitable for gathering scientific data. Instead of sitting idle, the ESO Cosmic Gems Programme allows ESO’s telescopes to be used to capture visually stunning images of the southern skies.

The Carina Nebula, one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the night sky, has been beautifully imaged by ESO’s VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. By observing in infrared light, VISTA has peered through the hot gas and dark dust enshrouding the nebula to show us myriad stars, both newborn and in their death throes.

A glittering host of galaxies populate this rich image taken with ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope, a state-of-the-art 2.6-m telescope designed for surveying the sky in visible light. The features of the multitude of galaxies strewn across the image allow astronomers to uncover the most delicate details of galactic structure.