 The skies above the Paranal Observatory in Chile are among the clearest and driest in the world, but occasionally the atmosphere isn't quite good enough for science observations. That's when astronomers dig up cosmic gems like this one. Welcome back to Launchpad. I'm Christian Ready, your friendly neighborhood astronomer. The European Southern Observatory released the spectacular image of the spiral galaxy NGC 3981. NGC 3981 is located in the constellation Crater, the Cup. The image was taken in May of 2018 with the focal reducer and low dispersion spectrograph 2, or FORES-2 instrument, on the European Southern Observatory's very large telescope. FORES-2 is mounted on the Unit 1 telescope named ANTU. This is one of the four telescopes belonging to the very large telescope, or VLT, at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile. FORES-2 has been dubbed the Swiss Army Knife of Instruments because it's able to study a variety of astronomical objects in many different ways, as well as being capable of producing beautiful images like this one. And that's a good thing because this image is really a consolation prize of sorts. The weather at Paranal is on average perfect for astronomy, but every once in a while the conditions aren't quite good enough for scientific observations. Rather than just let the telescope sit there, astronomers use that time to make images like these as part of ESO's Cosmic Gems program, a collection of visually interesting images for public outreach and education. But the image is more than just a pretty picture. It tells us a story of a galaxy that's inclined to our line of sight from Earth. This allows us to peer into the heart of the galaxy and observe its bright center. Lurking beneath is a supermassive black hole, some 70 million times the mass of our sun. Surrounding the galaxy's center are a pair of tightly wound spiral arms, strewn with bright bursts of star formation. But the outer spiral arms aren't quite so spiral-like. They're disrupted and pulled away from the rest of the galaxy. These are the telltale signs that NGC 3981 was involved in a cosmic fender bender with another galaxy long ago. The encounter disrupted NGC 3981's spiral structure, flinging its outer stars and gas into new orbits. Clouds of gas, dust and stars collided within the arms, setting off waves of star formation in the process. In fact, NGC 3981 belongs to a small group of about 13 other galaxies. The largest member of this group are actually two galaxies called the antennae galaxies. These two were once spiral galaxies that fell into an orbit around one another. Their ongoing collision is triggering new waves of star formation. NGC 3981 is not the only interesting feature captured in this image. As well as several foreground stars from our own galaxy, the Milky Way, Force II also captured a rogue asteroid streaking across the sky. This particular asteroid reveals how the image was made, as three different exposures in blue, green and red filters were taken. These images were then later combined to create this full-color image of the galaxy. I love how we get to see the scale of the cosmos compressed like this. With a tiny piece of our solar system, photobombing a galaxy containing hundreds of billions of suns, tens of millions of light-years away. It's said that every image tells a story, and this image tells us several at once. If you'd like to learn more stories about our universe, please make sure to hit the subscribe button and ring that notification bell so that you don't miss out on any new videos. Until next time, keep watching the skies.