UVES during its assembly

UVES, the Ultra-Violet Echelle Spectrograph, is one of the three instruments installed on KUEYEN, the second Unit Telescope of the VLT. The light of a star or another celestial object is concentrated by the 8.2m mirror of the telescope on the entrance of the instrument, which then disperses it along its wavelengths. With this particular instrument, the dispersion is extremely high, so that the astronomers can study the fine details of the light distribution -or spectrum. On this image, UVES is shown during its assembly in the laboratory at the ESO headquarters in Garching in 1999.