Moon and stars at Paranal

The Moon is on the horizon at the location of ESO's VLT in Paranal, sharing the sky with the vast number of stars that can be seen from this site. The bright band of stars that arcs across the image is our own Galaxy, the Milky Way. That so many stars are visible is owing to the extraordinarily dark skies observed at Paranal, which has about 300 such clear nights per year. As the world's most advanced optical instrument, the VLT is designed to make the most of these excellent conditions to study the Universe and astronomical objects, and leads to the publication of an average of more than one peer-reviewed scientific paper per day.