Mounted image 012: Bird’s eye view of the observing platform

This 2005 aerial shot of ESO’s Very Large Telescope array on top of the 2600 metre-high Cerro Paranal in the Chilean Atacama Desert beautifully shows the various stations for the mobile Auxiliary Telescopes. The largest ­structures are the enclosures of the four 8.2‑metre Unit Telescopes of the VLT. In the middle lies the VLT Interferometer laboratory.