Beyond

Giant eyes on the Cerro Paranal Observatory in the barren Atacama Desert explore the worlds beyond. The bright central bulge of the Milky Way galaxy in the constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius approaches the western horizon in this single-exposure photograph. With its amazing dark, steady, and transparent sky, Paranal is home to some of the world’s leading telescopes. Operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) the Very Large Telescope (VLT) is located on Paranal, composed of four 8-meter telescopes and smaller auxiliary telescopes, each 1.8 m in aperture, which are photographed here and each is and essential elements of the VLT interferometer.

Click on the second photo to see a long-exposure star trail version of this image.