Sun and telescopes

The Unit Telescopes (UT) of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) reflect golden sunlight from their platform at the Paranal Observatory, which sits on top of Cerro Paranal, a 2600-metre high mountain in the Chilean Atacama Desert. Each UT has a mirror 8.2 metres in diameter, making them some of the largest single-mirror telescopes in the world, and can see objects four billion times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye. Used in combination, they are even more powerful. Each UT has its own instruments tailored to specific kinds of observations, and the VLT's instrumentation programme is the most ambitious ever conceived for a single observatory, covering all major observing modes required to tackle most current front-line research topics.