VLTs Starry Sky

The perfectly dark sky above Very Large Telescope array in Cerro Paranal mountain of Atacama Desert in Chile. Three of the four 8-meter VLT telescopes are shown in this image. Above them the prominent constellations of Auriga, Taurus (including Pleiades), Orion (upper center), and Canis Major (Sirius at top) are located at the shores of the Milky Way band. Compared to the common northern hemisphere view of Orion, here in southern hemisphere the standing hunter man is upside down. As noted by the photographer and European Southern Observatory Astronomer “In this view Orion is culminating in the North. I used a Canon 400D camera equipped with a 10-22 mm lens for this 5 minutes exposure on a tracking mount. © Yuri Beletsky