The VLT sharpens its view

This image was obtained in the early morning of June 6, 1998. It shows the central part of the southern globular cluster Messier 55 (or NGC 6809) in the constellation Sagittarius. The exposure lasted 30 seconds and was made with the VLT Test Camera through an optical filtre isolating mostly red light (570 - 700 nm). It is here shown exactly as it was obtained ("raw image"), without any image processing . The brightness level in the reproduction has been set so that the fainter stars are well visible. The field shown is 83 x 83 arcsec; each pixel measures 0.0455 arcsec.