Yep-universe

Unit Telescope 4 (Yepun) of ESO's Very Large Telescope observes the night sky from its home, the Paranal Observatory, which is located on top of Cerro Paranal, a 2600-metre high mountain in the Chilean Atacama Desert. The laser light that Yepun sends up to the sky creates an artificial guide star for the Adaptive Optics system, state-of-the-art technology that corrects the blurring effects of the Earth's atmosphere to produce sharper images. This is just one aspect of the highly advanced technology deployed by the VLT, that makes it well placed to take advantage of the excellent viewing conditions at Paranal, which enjoys about 300 clear nights per year.