When the stars threw down their spears

Star trails captured over a period of observing time at ESO's VLT. The star trails in this photo are not the usual circular ones that you see in long exposures due to Earth's rotation. In this case the star trails seem to emerge from a central point which is achieved by creatively using a zoom lens and zooming in or out during the exposure. The central focus of the photo is the laser light sent up by Unit Telescope 4 (Yepun) of the VLT. The laser light creates an artificial guide star, which is part of the state-of-the-art Adaptive Optics system that corrects the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere to capture sharper images.