Stargazers

The four Unit Telescopes of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) swivel to fix their gaze on their targets during this timelapse panorama footage taken at their home, the Paranal Observatory. From left to right, they are UT1 (Antu), UT2 (Kueyen), UT3 (Melipal) and UT4 (Yepun). Each UT has a main mirror 8.2 metres in diameter, and can see objects four billion times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye. On the far right is one of the four movable Auxiliary Telescopes that can feed light into the VLT Interferometer, to create even higher resolution images.