Eyes on the stars

The Unit Telescopes of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) swivel to fix their gaze on their targets in this timelapse footage from the Paranal Observatory. The starry sky appears to turn overhead due to the Earth's rotation on its axis, and the Sun begins to rise at the end of the video, bringing another long night of observing to a close. The VLT is the world's most advanced optical instrument, and the most productive individual ground-based facility, leading to the publication of an average of more than one peer-reviewed scientific paper per day.