This all-sky image of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile shows all four VLT units in a single family portrait beneath the Milky Way. The four 8.2-metre (27-foot) VLT telescopes, housed in their box-like enclosures, are flanked on either side by two of four 1.8-metre (5.9-foot) Auxiliary Telescopes with their round domes open to the night sky. At right, a bright yellow laser beam extends upward, forming an artificial star used by the observatory’s adaptive optics system to help counteract the effects of atmospheric turbulence.
This composite image was captured and assembled by ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek.
