Moonlit panorama at La Silla

This panoramic image shows the La Silla observatory glistening under the cool glow of moonlight. Because the image wraps around almost a full 360 degrees, the angle of the lighting becomes downright surreal; notice how the photographer’s shadow seems to stretch towards the Moon, and how the shiny ESO 3.6-metre telescope in the foreground appears to reflect light from a source located opposite the Moon. Fortunately, such optical trickery does not trouble La Silla’s fleet of telescopes, which reside at an altitude of 2,400 metres in the arid Chilean Atacama Desert. In fact, La Silla’s MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope has snapped some of astronomy’s iconic images with the Wide Field Imager (WFI) camera. Also at this observatory, the 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) broke new ground for telescope engineering and design and was the first in the world to have a computer-controlled main mirror (active optics), a technology developed at ESO and now applied to most of the world's current large telescopes. A spectrograph called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher), mounted on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope, stands as the world’s foremost exoplanet hunter. La Silla, ESO’s first observatory, remains at the cutting-edge of astronomical discovery.

A virtual tour is available here.

Links

Enjoy also our exciting Virtual Tours.

Crédit:

ESO

À propos de l'image

Identification:potw1014a-ext
Type:Photographique
Date de publication:5 avril 2010 17:04
Taille:5472 x 2736 px
Field of View:360° x 180°

À propos de l'objet

Nom:La Silla, Panorama
Type:Unspecified : Technology : Observatory
Catégorie:360 Panorama
La Silla

Image Formats

Grand JPEG
2,6 Mio
JPEG taille écran
132,9 Kio

Zoomable


Fonds d'écran

1024x768
186,0 Kio
1280x1024
289,6 Kio
1600x1200
411,5 Kio
1920x1200
483,5 Kio
2048x1536
646,7 Kio