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A projected panorama of all four Very Large Telescope Unit Telescopes at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, as well as a few smaller Auxiliary Telescopes, framed by the arc-shaped Milky Way.
ESO
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Adaptive optics, which fire powerful laser beams into the upper layers of the atmosphere, can be seen here from the Very Large Telescope.
ESO
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Another view of ESO’s Paranal Observatory.
ESO
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A daytime view of the Paranal Observatory. The photographer captured a rectangular panorama of the site.
ESO/G. brammer
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The La Silla site is home to cutting-edge technology and research. The road to the La Silla site shows the stunning detail of a sky without the interference of light pollution.
ESO/Petr Horalek
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The landscape of Chile’s La Silla Observatory can be seen as a rim as a comet streaks across the constellations of the zodiac.
ESO
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At the Paranal Observatory, one of the Unit telescopes points to the center of the Milky Way while the guide laser is active.
ESO
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This panorama of Chile’s Atacama Desert lets the moon shine overhead. Petroglyphs are visible on the boulders.
ESO
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A view of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Above your head the Milky Way shines in the middle.
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A reddish tint called airglow fills the sky above the decommissioned Swedish/ESO submillimetre telescope at La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
ESO
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And for Ars readers, a 360-degree panorama of the ALMA correlator room. Installed at the remote high-altitude ALMA site in the Andes of northern Chile, it is one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
ESO
The best observatory in the world is perhaps spread over three locations in northern Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. Each location in the high, arid Atacama Desert provides excellent dark and clear skies for the European Southern Observatory’s array of telescopes. At 2,635 meters altitude, Paranal has the best instruments, with four telescopes of 8.2 meters that together form the Very Large Telescope.
The observatory is now over 50 years old and has been instrumental or instrumental in a number of important astronomical milestones, including the discovery of dark energy, the finding of Proxima b around Proxima Centauri, the observation of stars orbiting the Milky Way , and many more more.
Such an observatory also fulfills another, more human purpose. Away from our light-polluted cities (and even in rural areas in developed countries), the dark skies over the Atacama offer perspective on the tiny Earth corner of the observable universe.
Many of us feel fear as 2016 turns into 2017. The world is full of turmoil, the new president of the United States is very different from his predecessors, and a spate of celebrity deaths reminds us of the fragility of life. Maybe a little perspective will help. So see – there is much, much more to the universe than the petty squabbles here on planet Earth.