A window to the desert

Reflections turn the reddish ground and the blue sky upside-down on the glass panels of this window, at ESO’s Paranal Observatory Residencia. The window offers a stunning view of the Mars-like landscape which characterises this area of the Chilean Atacama Desert, one of Earth’s best windows on the Universe. The 2600-metre-high Cerro Paranal, located some 120 km south of Antofagasta in the II Region of Chile, is home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the world’s most advanced optical ground-based astronomical observatory. Only some 20 km away is Cerro Armazones, the selected site for the planned Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the world’s largest eye on the sky.