Stars trails over La Silla

A long series of exposure at night captures these impressive star trails over ESO’s La Silla observatory. The stars appear as trails because of the apparent motion of the sky, which is, in fact, due to the rotation of the Earth on its own axis. The picture is taken looking toward the south. The celestial south pole is visible on the right, above the dome of the telescope seen in the foreground. The lighter area on the left  is the diffuse glow of the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds, two irregular galaxies which are neighbours of our Milky Way galaxy.