The road to Armazones

A camera drone follows sections of the road that connects Cerro Armazones, the site of ESO's forthcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), to ESO's observatory site at Cerro Paranal, home of the Very Large Telescope. A new section of road has been built to link the Armazones site to the existing main highway and now it is but a 30-minute journey between the two observatories. This is surely one of the world's most spectacular roads, snaking through the desolate beauty of Chile's Atacama desert, one of the driest places on Earth. The video includes a striking view of the top of Cerro Armazones itself, where the ELT, the biggest telescope in the world, will be a monument to scientific exploration.