Southern Cross above ESO's 3.6-m telescope at La Silla

The Mapuche people interpret the Southern Cross as the footprint of a ñandú, an ostrich-like bird. This picture shows this constellation above ESO’s 3.6 m telescope at La Silla observatory in Chile. The two bright stars in the bottom-right part of the image are Alpha and Beta Centauri, which in Mapuche cosmology correspond to “boleadoras” thrown by a hunter to entangle the bird’s legs.