VLT's Auxiliary

One of the four Auxiliary Telescopes of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) fixes its gaze on the sky above its home at the Paranal Observatory. The auxiliary telescopes feed light into the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), increasing quantity of data, and the resolution of the images produced. Paranal's location at an altitude of 2600 metres in the Chilean Atacama Desert offers excellent viewing conditions, enjoying about 300 clear nights per year. As exemplified in this image, our own galaxy the Milky Way is visible as a bright band overhead in the breathtaking skies of the southern hemisphere.