Top Picks

Description

Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of Chile is truly an astronomers paradise with its stunningly dark, steady and transparent sky. The barren Atacama Desert is home to some of the world's leading telescopes. Operated by the European Southern Observatory (eso.org) the Very Large Telescope (VLT) is located on Paranal, composed of four 8 m telescopes which can combine their light to make a giant telescope by interferometry. Four smaller auxiliary telescopes, each 1.8 m in aperture, are important elements of the VLT interferometer. This footage is made during an imaging expedition to Paranal assigned by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). All video rights reserved by Christoph Malin (christophmalin.com) and Babak Tafreshi (twanight.org/tafreshi) of The World at Night (TWAN) program ( twanight.org). The inside observatory video is contributed by Stephane Guisard (astrosurf.com/sguisard). The music is by Carbon Based Lifeforms (carbonbasedlifeforms.net). Song Arecibo extract from the album [Twentythree], write & produced by Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Segerstad, published by Ultimae (ultimae.com). PEACE AND LOVE to all