u/muitosabao

VLT images of the S301 star orbiting Sagittarius A* (Credit: ESO/GRAVITY collaboration)

Astronomers have discovered the fastest known star in our galaxy, the Milky Way, orbiting the black hole at its centre. The star, named S301, was detected with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI) and reaches speeds of 25 000 km/s (8% the speed of light) as it travels around the four-million-Solar-mass black hole. It comes closer to it than any other observed before, so close that it feels the effects of the black hole’s rotation.

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2612/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hipydeus/55461713751/

With some advise from CMDRs on another post here, went for a couple of thousand LY around colonia. Collected some 200M credits in exobio and quite a few of first discoveries! People were right, it's quite easy around Colonia.

Sodium and lithium gas was detected in a plume thought to span tens of kilometres, created when part of a SpaceX rocket crashed into the lunar surface.

The VLT spectra, taken with the UVES instrument, show emission lines of sodium & lithium. The sodium likely originated from the lunar soil, whereas the lithium could come from the rocket itself.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/aug/06/spacex-rocket-crash-into-moon-impact

Playing via steam link, 130 jumps and “typing” with the controller…

System around the star CD-35 2722, with the newly found moon-like object at the centre. The star –– the point source to the left –– has about half the mass of our Sun, and it is orbited by a brown dwarf, the reddish-brown object seen here in the foreground (right). The brown dwarf has about 37 times the mass of Jupiter: too massive to be a planet, but not massive enough to have sustained nuclear fusion like stars. This brown dwarf is, in turn, orbited by a newly discovered object at least as massive as Jupiter, seen at the centre of this image.

This new object, found with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), is difficult to label. It behaves like a moon in the sense that it orbits an object that orbits a star. But this ‘moon’ is massive enough to be a planet, and the object it orbits, a brown dwarf, is neither a planet nor a star.

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2610/

 Beta Pictoris d orbiting around its host star Beta Pictoris over more than a decade. The planet was discovered with the ERIS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The observations were performed in 2025, and it prompted astronomers to search for the planet in previous archival observations. The planet turned up in data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope taken earlier in 2025 and 2023, as well as observations with the SPHERE instrument at the VLT going as far back as 2014.
Credit:

ESO/B. Sutlieff, M. Bonse et al.
https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso2609b/

This image, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows Beta Pictoris d, a new planet found orbiting the star Beta Pictoris. The star is at the centre of the frame, and was subtracted when processing the data, revealing the environment around it. The new planet, indicated with an arrow, is the third one found around this star. The other two are Beta Pictoris b –– the bright source to the left, and Beta Pictoris c, orbiting much closer to the star and not seen here.

The image was taken with the ERIS instrument at the VLT. Based on its infrared brightness and colour, the new planet appears to be a gas giant, about 2.4 times more massive than Jupiter.
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso2609a/

On the way back from the last CG, I passed by a neutron star and it had someone’s carrier parked next to it. I came back to the game recently and there’s a few mechanics I don’t get yet. Why did the player their carrier there? Just role playing, because they could or is there a purpose to it? I was surprised to see that it had vista genomics shop and I managed to sell some of the exobiology I had been doing on my way back.
Do the players get a cut from the sales?

Hi cmdrs, o7! I was an original backer and played ED on and off every few years. I've now had a break since Odyssey released (5 years!), but Elite never leaves my mind and I always follow this subreddit and related Elite news.
After this week's update and with free time on my hand, decided it was time to revisit an old friend. Decided to take a shortcut and buy the Caspian Explorer, fit it with a Nomad and plunged into the dark and fly the 1500LY to participate in the new CG.

Perfect to try new activities: exploration and exobiology. Had to relearn a lot along the way, as some things were forgotten, others...like ridding a bike.

Encountered some new life-forms, supercharged my first FSD with a neutron star, and was greeted at Magrathea II by CMDR Sebastian Firefly (hello! nice to meet you)

This game is such a technical wonder. How is this even possible? It continues being an unique and extraordinary experience, and I'm happy to see FD continuing injecting life into it.

Centaurus A from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope pairs observations from the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). Webb’s infrared vision exposes a warped disk of gas and dust left behind by a collision with another galaxy billions of years ago.

What may first appear as a grainy glow is actually a dense field of millions of individually resolved stars. By distinguishing different generations of stars embedded throughout the dusty centre, Webb gives astronomers new clues to the galaxy’s history and the processes that continue to shape it.

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2615b/
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI), J. Depasquale (STScI), M. Garcia Marin (ESA Office at STScI)

Credit: NASA Johnson Space Center / Riccardo Rossi

AB Aurigae is located in the Auriga constellation, 520 light-years away from Earth. While the overall rotation of the material within the disc is governed by the star’s gravity, there are features like “twists” signalling the places where planets could be forming. As the new planets interact with surrounding material and feed with gas and dust, they create disturbances that cause this phenomenon as the planet rotates around the star. These features are better seen in the right side of the video, which has been processed to enhance these structures.

The images were taken with the SPHERE instrument at the VLT, which blocks the glare of the central star, revealing the disc around it in great detail. In particular, the images show radial shadows caused by opaque clumps from denser parts of the disc that can be seen orbiting this star. These SPHERE observations will be key to understanding the precise way in which planets form around this star.