ESOshop: Poster: VLT's Laser and the Magellanic Clouds

Under the night sky of Chile's Atacama Desert, Yepun, the fourth 8.2-meter Unit Telescope of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), pierces the darkness with its powerful laser beams.

These beams play a vital role in the VLT's ability to capture incredibly sharp images of the universe. By exciting sodium atoms high in Earth’s atmosphere, about 90 km above the ground, they create bright spots in the sky – sorts of "artificial stars". The light from these artificial stars is used to correct observations for atmospheric distortions, resulting in images nearly as sharp as if they were taken from space.

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