Honey, I shrunk the Very Large Telescope

In this Picture of the Week, the Moon is slowly setting behind ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Paranal, Chile. It was taken on August 19 2024 by astronomer and astrophotographer Yuri Beletsky during what is sometimes referred to as a “Super Moon”, a non-scientific name indicating a full moon occurring when the Moon is closest to Earth.

Due to its elliptical orbit, the Moon’s distance to Earth varies with time. The closest point is called the perigee, which is why astronomers would call this event a perigee full moon. When this happens, the Moon looks larger than at its average distance — but only by about 7%, which is not much at all.

So, how do you take pictures like this, where the Moon looks so big that it dwarfs the very large buildings next to it? First of all, make sure to bring a big telephoto lens with impressive zoom. For a shot like this, you’ll also need to position yourself several kilometers from the telescope buildings. Here, that means moving over some very rocky terrain in the Atacama Desert! But when you go far enough, the VLT’s big domes — 28.5 m high — will indeed appear small, while the Moon remains the same size. Now zoom in and… tadaa!

Yuri explains: "The planned location of the camera was at the distance of ~13 km from the VLT platform. It turned out the site wasn’t as accessible as we thought, and it took us a while to get to the spot in a 4x4 truck. We arrived in the afternoon of August 18, and we camped there in the desert overnight to capture the Moonset which was happening next morning at 06:56."

Sounds like a lot of work? It is. Maybe that is why spectacular pictures featuring a huge full Moon are often manipulated, or even AI generated. This one is real, but could you spot a fake one? To become an expert, read the blogpost on how to spot fake astrophotography images.