One of the thousands of minor planets orbiting the Sun has been found to have
its own mini planetary system. Astronomers have discovered the first triple
asteroid system - two small asteroids orbiting a larger one known since 1866 as
87 Sylvia.

The discovery was made with Yepun, one of ESO's 8.2-m telescopes of the Very
Large Telescope Array at Cerro Paranal (Chile), and allow the astronomers to
infer that 87 Sylvia is most probably a rubble-pile asteroid, the result of a
collision.

Read the full story and see the computer animation at

http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2005/pr-21-05.html

Using VLT data from the ESO Science Archive, two new images of magnificient
spiral galaxies have been published: one - NGC 4565 - is seen edge-on, while the
other - Messier 83 - is face-on. See these dream images at

http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2005/phot-24-05.html