The desert around VISTA

This view of the reddish, Mars-like landscape of the Atacama Desert around the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), was taken from the neighbouring Cerro Paranal, home of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). VISTA started operations at the end of 2009 and the latest telescope to be added to ESO´s Paranal Observatory, located some 120 km south from Antofagasta, in the II Region of Chile. VISTA is the largest telescope in the world dedicated to surveying the sky and works at near-infrared wavelengths.