Sunset over Paranal panorama *

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) on the 2600-metre-high Cerro Paranal is ESOs premier site for observations in the visible and infrared light. It is located in the Chilean Atacama desert. All four unit telescopes of 8.2-metre diameter are individually in operation with a large collection of instruments and have already made amazing scientific discoveries.

The VLT offers also the possibility of combining coherently the light from the four UTs to work as an interferometer. The Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), with its own suite of instruments, ultimately providing imagery at the milli-arcsecond level as well as astrometry at 10 micro-arcsecond precision. In addition to the 8.2-metre diameter telescopes, the VLTI is complemented with four Auxiliary Telescopes (AT) of 1.8-metre diameter to improve its imaging capabilities and enable full nighttime use on a year-round basis.

The enclosure of the yet to come VLT Survey Telescope (2.6-metre diameter) is visible in the centre of the panorama.