Red Paranal

Cerro Paranal can be seen at the bottom of this fish-eye (fulldome) distant view of the home of the Very Large Telescope array (VLT). The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two companion galaxies to our own Milky Way galaxy (directly overhead), can be seen as bright smudges in the night sky above the mountain. The Chilean sky is enhanced by a bright red aurora-like shimmer, called airglow, which is caused by light-emitting chemical reactions in the atmosphere. Normally, those emissions are not so strong, but the night this image was taken they were particularly bright, producing this unusual picture.