A VLT Auxiliary Telescopes watches the Milky Way setting

Thanks to the exceptional quality of the sky at Cerro Paranal, a magnificent Milky Way is captured while setting very low on the horizon. This impressive shot was taken from the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) platform on Paranal. The VLT has four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (UTs), plus four 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs), one of which is seen in this photograph. The ATs are dedicated to interferometry, a technique which allows astronomers to see details up to 25 times finer than with the individual telescopes. The ATs can be moved across the platform over rails to 30 different positions. In this picture, the core of our galaxy is visible as a yellowish bulge crossed by dark lanes of dust. The brightest dot above is Jupiter.