The 2.2-metre Telescope has been in operation at La Silla since early 1984 and is on indefinite loan to ESO from the Max Planck Society (Max Planck Gesellschaft or MPG in German). Telescope time is shared between MPG and ESO observing programmes, while the operation and maintenance of the telescope are ESO’s responsibility.

The telescope hosts three instruments: the 67-million pixel Wide Field Imager with a field of view as large as the full Moon, which has taken many amazing images of celestial objects; GROND, the Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector, which chases the afterglows of the most powerful explosions in the Universe, known as gamma-ray bursts; and the high-resolution spectrograph, FEROS, used to make detailed studies of stars.

More details can be found on the telescope page.