Hunter of the night

This unusual composition shows the Milky Way like a great dagger through the sky, over the winding road leading through the La Silla Observatory. The ESO 3.6-metre telescope is visible reflected in a roadside mirror. The telescope hosts HARPS, the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, the world's foremost exoplanet hunting instrument.

Links to alternative projections of this image:

• Fisheye version of this image
• Equirectangular projected version of this image
• Extended to 360 x 180 degrees (with black) version of this image