  Cerro Paranal VLT Observatory, Chile
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Cerro Paranal is a mountain in the Atacama desert of northern Chile that is home to the Paranal Observatory. It is the site of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and is located 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Antofagasta, 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) inland.
The Very Large Telescope array (VLT) is the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy at the beginning of the third Millennium. It is the world’s most advanced optical instrument, consisting of four Unit Telescopes with main mirrors of 8.2m diameter and four movable 1.8m diameter Auxiliary Telescopes. The telescopes can work together, to form a giant "interferometer", the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer, allowing astronomers to see details up to 25 times finer than with the individual telescopes. The light beams are combined in the VLTI using a complex system of mirrors in underground tunnels where the light paths must be kept equal to distances less than 1/1000 mm over a hundred meters. With this kind of precision the VLTI can reconstruct images with an angular resolution of milliarcseconds, equivalent to distinguishing the two headlights of a car at the distance of the Moon.
The 8.2m diameter Unit Telescopes can also be used individually. With one such telescope, images of celestial objects as faint as magnitude 30 can be obtained in a one-hour exposure. This corresponds to seeing objects that are four billion times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye.
The large telescopes are named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun after the meaningful names of celestial objects in the Mapuche language. More…
Please also visit the ESO Ultra HD Expedition blog by my friends Babak Tafreshi and Christoph Malin.
Click on thumbnails for a larger version
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VLT control workspace
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Unit Telescope 2 (UT2): Kueyen
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Unit Telescope 2 (UT2): Kueyen
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Unit Telescope 2 (UT2): Kueyen
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Unit Telescope 2 (UT2): Kueyen
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Kueyen’s 8.2-meter mirror
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Kueyen’s 8.2-meter mirror
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Kueyen’s 8.2-meter mirror
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On the panoramic views below you can see two of the four newly installed powerful laser guides. Known as the Four Laser Guide Stars Facility (4LGSF), the new system uses four lasers to create artificial guide stars anywhere in the sky, permitting the Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF) to compensate for the blurring caused by the Earth’s atmosphere. Since April 2016, the 4LGSF is a complement of the VLT Laser Guide Star Facility (LGSF). Instead of a single laser beam, the 4LGSF propagates four laser beams into the skies of Paranal, in northern Chile, producing four artificial stars by illuminating sodium atoms located in the atmosphere at 90 km altitude. Each laser delivers 22 watts in a diameter of 30 cm (12 in). The 4LGSF Laser System is based on a fiber Raman laser technology, developed at ESO and transferred to industry. The upgrade to four lasers with fiber Raman laser technology was necessary to support the new instruments at Paranal Observatory, like HAWK-I (with GRAAL) and MUSE (with GALACSI). Also with the 4LGSF the stability is increased, the amount of preventive maintenance support and the preparation of an observing run time will be considerably reduced compared to the LGSF, which currently uses still its original dye laser (planned to be replaced by a fiber laser). The 4LGSF helps astronomers to test devices for the E-ELT, which will have a similar system to support the adaptive optics of the telescope. Given its power, the 4LGSF operations follow a protocol to avoid any risk and the laser system is equipped with an automatic aircraft avoidance system that shuts down the lasers if an aircraft ventures too close to the beams.
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Panoramic view of Yepun, one of the four unit telescopes at the VLT, on Cerro Paranal in May 2016
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Yepun’s Four Laser Guide Stars Facility (4LGSF) in action on Cerro Paranal in May 2016
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Panoramic view of Yepun, one of the four unit telescopes at the VLT, on Cerro Paranal in May 2016
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Français
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