January - Lunar halo above the Very Large Telescope

An otherworldly image, showing the Moon sur-rounded by a lunar halo on a rare cloudy night, above the four Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope in northern Chile. This optical phenome-non is created when moonlight is refracted by ice and water droplets in the atmosphere. The right-most Unit Telescope beams lasers into the sky to create artificial stars, a technique used to correct for blurring caused by atmospheric turbulence.