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Circle of telescopes

The Unit Telescopes of ESO's Very Large Telescope are visible at the edges of this fisheye lens picture taken at the Paranal Observatory. The Unit Telescopes each have a main mirror 8.2 metres in diameter, making them some of the largest single-mirror telescopes in the world, and they can see objects four billion times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye. The VLT is the world's most productive individual ground-based facility, leading to the publication of an average of more than one peer-reviewed scientific paper per day.