14 DAY TRIAL // Officials with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have just released this amazing photo of the Milky Way, snapped at the Cerro Paranal Observatory, in Chile. This installation is the home of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), parts of which appear in the photo as well.
Countless stars, gas clouds and nebulae appear to be spanning the night sky right above the 4 main telescopes and 4 tracking telescopes that make up the VLT. The image shows many of the targets that the observatory has been trained at over the years.
The triangular band of diffuse light to the right of the image represents the path of the Sun over the sky, as seen from this vantage point. Most constellations in the zodiac can be seen in this photograph, ESO experts say. Granted, they are intermingled, so it is relatively difficult to identify them all.
The VLT is one of the most capable telescopes in the world. It works on a process called optical interferometry, which enables its command center to mix all light collected from all 8 telescopes into a single image. The result is a dataset featuring as many details as would have been produced by a telescope with a diameter equal to the maximum distance between any two VLT telescopes.