No domes were harmed!
Don't worry, no holes have been pierced into the dome — the laser is meant to pierce the sky!
Today's Picture of the Week shows a trial run of a new laser of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). Located in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the VLT actually has four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (UTs) like the one in this image. Using interferometry, astronomers can make the UTs work as a team to create a virtual telescope, the VLT Interferometer or VLTI, with a maximum diameter of 130 metres! GRAVITY is one of the instruments that can do this, enabling astronomers to see very small details. However, this boundary is set to be pushed even further with the ongoing GRAVITY+ upgrade.
Previously, only one UT had lasers, but the new improvements include installing additional lasers on all UTs, like the one shown in this picture. These lasers are used to create an artificial star in the Earth's atmosphere to measure the air turbulence and correct it with a modern adaptive optics system. This is key to accurately combine the light of all telescopes. Until now, GRAVITY relied on bright natural stars to do this, but finding such stars next to the astronomical object one wants to study is rare. Having lasers in all UTs fixes this problem, allowing the VLTI to observe faint objects over a larger area of the sky than before.
This opens the door to even fainter and more distant objects, as well as achieving a higher contrast for the brighter and closer sources. Among other things, the GRAVITY+ upgrade will allow astronomers to study the atmospheres of exoplanets, weigh distant supermassive black holes in other galaxies, and test the effects of General Relativity near the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. We will look forward to the upcoming first light of all lasers with the VLTI, and to the mysteries this upgrade will reveal as we gaze deeper into the infinite expanses of our universe with greater detail.
Crediti:A. Berdeu/ESO
Riguardo l'immagine
| Identificazione: | potw2538a |
| Tipo: | Fotografico |
| Data di rilascio: | Lunedì 22 Settembre 2025 06:00 |
| Grandezza: | 11808 x 8856 px |
Riguardo all'oggetto
| Nome: | Very Large Telescope |
| Tipo: | Unspecified : Technology : Observatory : Telescope |
| Categoria: | Paranal |
Formati delle immagini
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