Dome of Light

Once used as the otherworldly lair for a James Bond villain, the ESO Residencia usually serves a far less sinister purpose! Since construction was completed in 2002, it has been a home from home for the astronomers, engineers and technicians working at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The sleek building sits 2400 metres above sea level in the Mars-like Atacama Desert, just a few kilometres from Cerro Paranal — the mountain that hosts ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA).

During the day the hotel is bathed in natural sunlight, which enters the building via a huge 35-metre-diameter dome on the roof. Seen here at night, the glass of the dome is beautifully illuminated beneath the Milky Way’s kaleidoscopic arch of blues, reds and pinks. Two neighbouring galaxies — the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds — can be seen as  white smudges beneath the curve of the Milky Way, with many colourful, bright stars bejewelling the surrounding scene.