February - Yepun fulldome

This bold fish-eye (fulldome) image perfectly captures the fourth Unit Telescope of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).

Lasers from this telescope, which is also known as Yepun, are used by astronomers as part of the VLT’s state-of-the-art adaptive optics system. These lasers create an artificial “guide star”, which the system uses to compensate for the blurring effects of Earth’s atmosphere. This allows astrono- mers to study the Universe in much greater detail.