Picture of the Week

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href="/public/"> <div data-spy="affix" class="affix"> <div class="sprites-esologo"></div> <span>European<br>Southern<br>Observatory</span> </div> </a> </div> <div class="container " id="body"> <div class="row no-page"> <div class="col-md-12"> <div class="archive-search outside"><form class="form-inline" role="form" action="/public/images/potw/" method="GET"><div class="form-group"><div class="input-group"><input id="id_archivesearch" type="text" value="" placeholder="Search Picture of the Week..." name="search" class="form-control input-sm" /><span class="input-group-btn"><button class="btn btn-default btn-sm" type="submit"><span class="fa fa-search"></span></button></span></div></div></form></div> </div> </div> <div class="row no-page"> <div class="col-md-12"> <h1>Picture of the Week <a href="https://feeds.feedburner.com/eso_potw" class="listviewrsslink"><span class="fa fa-rss"></span></a></h1> </div> </div> <div class="row no-page"> <div class="col-md-12"> <a href="https://www.eso.org/public/outreach/newsletters/esonews.html" class="esonews_link">Subscribe to receive news from ESO in your language!</a> <div class="row news-list"> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2513a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2513a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2513 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">Supermassive black hole caught playing with its food</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>31 March 2025</strong>: This Picture of the Week shows a stunning spiral galaxy known as NGC 4945. This little corner of space, near the constellation of Centaurus and over 12 million light-years away, may seem peaceful at first — but NGC 4945 is locked in a violent struggle. At the very centre of nearly every galaxy is a supermassive black hole. Some, like the one at the centre of our own Milky Way, aren’t particularly hungry. But NGC 4945’s supermassive black hole is ravenous, consuming huge amounts of matter — and the MUSE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has caught it playing with its food. This messy eater, contrary to a black hole’s typical all-consuming reputation, is blowing out powerful winds of material. This cone-shaped wind is shown in red in the inset, overlaid on a wider image captured with the MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla. In fact, this wind is ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2512a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2512a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2512 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">A full Moon rises behind the ELT</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>24 March 2025</strong>: The full Moon looms large in this Picture of the Week, framing ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Taken at precisely the moment that the rising Moon appears to perch atop Cerro Armazones, this perfectly timed photo captures the striking halo created around the ELT’s ongoing construction. On either side of the telescope’s structure we can see the outlines of gigantic cranes, hard at work shaping what will become the world’s largest optical and infrared telescope. The construction team, led by the company Cimolai, has partially covered the ELT dome with insulating cladding, captured here shining as the sun sets, that will protect the telescope from sunlight and the harsh environment of the Atacama desert. Through an opening in this dome, we can also peek at the telescope’s main structure, which will hold the ELT’s five mirrors. Right now, one of the two sliding doors that will cover this opening is ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2511a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2511a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2511 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">Four lasers, four layers of the Cosmos</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>17 March 2025</strong>: The four lasers of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) pierce the heart of the Milky Way in this Picture of the Week. The starry night is interrupted by the vertical glow of the zodiacal light, caused by dust grains in the Solar System, so faint that it’s only visible in the darkest skies, such as those of Chile’s Atacama Desert. The pristine night sky in this region has always been intertwined with the culture and traditions of its indigenous people. The Chakana is a recurrent symbol within Andean cultures. Shaped like a square stepped cross, it represents four stairs or bridges to the upper levels of the Andean cosmovision. For the Mapuche people in south-central Chile, the sky is the Wenu mapu, a land of goodness and order inhabited by deities, ancestors and benign spirits. The Wenu mapu is ordered into four layers where holy beings like the four gods ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2510a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2510a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2510 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">A planetary party portrait above Paranal</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>10 March 2025</strong>: In this portrait of ESO’s Paranal Observatory, taken in early February, our planets appear to parade one after the other across the night sky. In addition to the Moon, our own Milky Way, and the comet C/2024 G3, we can see Saturn, Venus, Jupiter and Mars — even Neptune and Uranus are hiding here too! Often on nights with a few planets in view, you can draw an imaginary straight line in the night sky through them. This is due to their orbital paths being relatively aligned along a single, flat plane called the ecliptic. (In reality, the planets aren’t aligned one after the other in a straight line in the Solar System, they are fanned out; but we can still see them simultaneously in the sky, which only happens every few years.) You may notice that in this image the planets are not contained within the band of the ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> </div> <div class="row news-list"> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2509a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2509a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2509 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">From the stairs to the stars</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>3 March 2025</strong>: Apart from actually going to space, you probably won’t feel much closer to the stars than at the top of the staircase at ESO’s Paranal Observatory shown in this picture. At 2635 metres (plus some twenty steps) above sea level in the Atacama Desert of Chile, you see a wealth of stars that remain hidden in other places, because Paranal boasts the darkest skies of all major observatories on Earth. At first glance, the centre of the Milky Way has turned itself into a dragon with a strange, orange tongue. But the only thing sneaking up on you in this Picture of the Week is the sheer beauty of the night sky. This is just a normal night for ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), which has its home in Paranal. The bright yellow beams are the VLT’s laser guide stars, shooting up from the telescope (to the right, but outside ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/videos/potw2508a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="/public/archives/videos/thumb350x/potw2508a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2508 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">The Exciting Little Timelapse: A year in the life of the ELT</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>24 February 2025</strong>: Last year saw outstanding progress for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). In this Picture of the Week, we’re looking back in time to see just how far the ELT has come. At first, we can see only a skeletal steel dome, which over the course of the year has been gradually coated in a shiny new layer of protective — and thermally insulating — cladding. Panel by panel, the enormous 80 m high, 93 m wide structure is being wrapped in a warm blanket of aluminium and other thermal regulators. This will help to keep the air inside the telescope at the expected temperature of the next night, and defend it from the sand and dust of the ELT’s harsh desert environment. But that's not all, as this timelapse also shows how much progress has been made building the ELT’s main structure. Growing like a great white crystal at the ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2507a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2507a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2507 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">Not too close encounters of the galactic kind</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>17 February 2025</strong>: This Picture of the Week shows NGC 3640, an unusual elliptical galaxy 88 million light-years away. The image, taken with the VLT Survey Telescope hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, reveals a menagerie of galaxies of all shapes and sizes, ranging from slight blue smudges to the fried-egg shape of NGC 3640. But amidst this colourful cosmic neighbourhood, one thing stands out — this egg has a double yolk: a smaller galaxy that might be too close for its comfort. Throughout their extremely long lifetime, galaxies change. As they soar through space, they may steal gas and stars from other galaxies, or even engulf and merge with them. After these events, galaxies can become distorted, as exemplified by the misshaped NGC 3640 and the diffuse light around it. The galaxy is then left with ‘scars’ that hint at a violent past, which astronomers can use to know its past and present ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2506a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2506a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2506 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">The framework for greatness</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>10 February 2025</strong>: Bathed in the sunset light of Chile’s Atacama Desert, this Picture of the Week shows steady progress in the construction of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). From up here, the ELT’s white tube-like altitude structure is clearly the eyecatcher. The close-knitted truss structure at the bottom is the support cell of the ELT’s 39-m primary mirror, the largest telescope mirror ever made. The light it collects from the cosmos will bounce off to the secondary mirror, which will be held in the central ring seen at the very top of the picture. Light will then travel down again through the ELT’s central tower and its three additional mirrors, before it reaches the scientific instruments that will be located at the side of the telescope. At first glance, with no humans or bananas for scale, the steel structure might look modest in size. But the altitude structure alone is already more ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> </div> <div class="row news-list"> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2505a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2505a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2505 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) wagging its tail</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>3 February 2025</strong>: “Comets are like cats: they have tails, and they do precisely what they want,” wrote David H. Levy, an amateur astronomer who discovered 23 comets. These cosmic visitors can indeed be pretty capricious. We never know exactly how long a comet will be visible in the sky. In January, the southern hemisphere had a captivating visitor in the form of the comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS). It looks magnificent in this Picture of the Week by Juan Beltrán, one of our engineers, who took it on 20 January at our Paranal Observatory in Chile. Just last year, another comet was also caught on camera visiting ESO Headquarters in Garching bei München, Germany. These so-called non-periodic comets only stick around in our skies for a few weeks. If you miss your photo opportunity, your next chance may be a few thousand years later… As comets approach the Sun they warm up, and ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2504a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2504a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2504 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">Revealing a filament from the cosmic web</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>29 January 2025</strong>: Is there an invisible web of dark matter surrounding us? Its influence can be observed across the cosmos, but the web remains unseen… for the most part. This Picture of the Week shows the clearest image yet of a filament from this cosmic web. The filament was imaged with ESO’s Very Large Telescope, and is shown here in purple overlaid on a background image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Made of gas clumped together by the influence of dark matter, the filament stretches out for 3 million light-years, connecting two distant galaxies in the early Universe. Around 85% of all matter in the Universe is actually dark matter. Dark matter is invisible, but the gas around it is not. This gas glows extremely faintly though, making these structures very difficult to observe. But after about 150 hours of observations, a team of astronomers led by Davide Tornotti, a PhD ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2503a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2503a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2503 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">New laser-sharp vision for Paranal’s facilities</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>20 January 2025</strong>: In this Picture of the Week, taken at the ESO Headquarters in Germany, you see the first of nine new lasers that are currently being built for two of ESO’s Paranal Observatory facilities, in Chile’s Atacama Desert. But why do telescopes need lasers? Not for shooting aliens, that’s for sure. Lasers are part of the telescopes’ adaptive optics system. As ESO’s observatories are ground-based, the turbulence in the atmosphere can blur our view of the cosmos, and with adaptive optics we can cancel this blurring out, in real time. The laser creates an artificial star by exciting sodium atoms in the atmosphere, around 90 kilometers high. A computer measures how the atmosphere distorts the light of this star and steers a shape-shifting mirror in the telescope to compensate for it. The result: sharper images. The light itself is generated in the laser source — the large grey box at the ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/videos/potw2502a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="/public/archives/videos/thumb350x/potw2502a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2502 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">Jupiter’s clouds are not made of ammonia ice</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>13 January 2025</strong>: Astronomers have long thought that the upper clouds of Jupiter, which create the planet’s iconic pale brown belts, are made of frozen ammonia. But a new study, that brought together amateur and professional astronomers, has shown that these clouds are actually located lower in the atmosphere than we thought and are made of something completely different: most likely ammonium hydrosulphide mixed with smog. Citizen scientist Steve Hill previously showed that he could map the planet’s atmosphere by using only specially coloured filters and his backyard telescope. These results provided initial clues that the clouds were too deep within Jupiter’s warm atmosphere to be consistent with clouds made of ammonia ice. To check, Hill joined forces with Patrick Irwin at Oxford University, whose team had previously used the sophisticated MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to study the atmosphere of gas giants. MUSE is capable of scanning the atmosphere ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> </div> <div class="row news-list"> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2501a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2501a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2501 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">Perfectly framed</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>6 January 2025</strong>: Astronomers mostly focus their attention on the sky, but sometimes it’s worth looking around our planet, too. At night, the star-spangled sky over Chile’s Atacama Desert steals the limelight, but once the barren landscape basks in sunlight again, other marvels are revealed. This Picture of the Week, for instance, could easily feature in a travel magazine. It is taken from Pukará de Quitor (Fort of Quitor), a stone fortress built centuries ago by the Licán Antai community, also known as Atacameños. You find it near San Pedro de Atacama, not far from where the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is housed, the radio telescope array which ESO operates together with its international partners. In this picture, the arch of the fortress is framing the Licancabur volcano, which looms up next to Chile’s border with Bolivia. On the mountain, other archaeological sites have been found, and its summit crater hides one ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2453a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2453a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2453 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">Mushroom-like telescopes capture cosmic signals</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>30 December 2024</strong>: This Picture of the Week shows mushrooms growing atop ESO’s La Silla Observatory, in Chile, bathed in the dim light of the sunset. Wait… these are not mushrooms, but telescopes! To the left stands the Danish 1.54-metre telescope and to the right, the three telescopes of the BlackGEM telescope array. The Danish 1.54-metre telescope has over 40 years of astronomical research on its shoulders. It observed for the first time the visible light associated with quick energetic events known as short gamma-ray bursts, showing that these explosions likely result from the fusion of two neutron stars. Operated jointly by research groups in Denmark and the Czech Republic, you can see this telescope hard at work every night via its dedicated webcam. This telescope doesn’t exclusively study these energetic events, but BlackGEM, developed in The Netherlands and Belgium, was specifically designed to do so. When large objects like neutron stars merge, ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2452a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2452a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2452 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">Under a blanket of snow</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>23 December 2024</strong>: How long can you stand outside looking at the Universe when it snows? No need to try it out, because you won’t be able to compete with the ALMA antennas in this Picture of the Week. At the Chajnantor plateau in Chile, ESO operates the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), together with its international partners. Temperatures here can drop as low as -20°C on winter nights, but ALMA’s radio antennas are usually unbothered by these chilling conditions. Compared to optical telescopes, radio antennas are pretty tough. Their gray metallic reflectors are exposed to biting winds and fluctuating temperatures. For a telescope’s mirror or dish to properly reflect the light it collects, the imperfections on its surface need to be smaller than the wavelength of the light. Optical telescope mirrors need to be perfectly smooth because they observe short wavelengths, like visible light, with wavelengths shorter than one micron. But ALMA ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/videos/potw2451a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="/public/archives/videos/thumb350x/potw2451a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2451 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">Happy Holidays from ESO (2024)</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>16 December 2024</strong>: As 2024 comes to an end, we want to send you astronomically good wishes for the holidays and the best for the upcoming new year! Spectacular images of stars inside and outside our galaxy, new insights into black holes, new exoplanets… 2024 was full of amazing discoveries. In the past year, ESO’s largest project, the Extremely Large Telescope, surpassed 60% of its total completion. Many of its components have been finished this year, including the M5 mirror cell and the blanks for the main mirror’s segments, sensors, actuators and laser sources, among other important developments in its instrumentation. A new year also means new resolutions. We are opening the door to innovative ideas for ESO’s next ground-based project through our Expanding Horizons program. These ideas will shape the future of ESO and astronomy in the upcoming decades. We wish you happy holidays and a great start of 2025!</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> </div> <div class="row news-list"> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2450a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2450a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2450 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">What’s in a nebula’s name?</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>9 December 2024</strong>: Do you see a playful fox, a skulking hyena or… a chicken’s head? Located in the Centaurus constellation, this gas cloud is part of the giant Running Chicken Nebula. Some people see it as the head of the chicken, others see the chicken’s rear end. But as much as scientists love fun names for nebulae, they are often not very conducive to clear communication in an international field like astronomy. That is why this nebula is formally known by two names that sound, well… a little less funky. In 1955, Australian astronomer Colin Stanley Gum made an inventory of 84 emission nebulae in the southern sky: the Gum catalog. This one is known, quite dryly, as Gum 40. Long before Gum, in 1888, Danish astronomer John Louis Emil Dreyer had already compiled the ambitious New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (NGC), an index of 7840 astronomical objects ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2449a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2449a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2449 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">A Milky Way for dinner?</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>2 December 2024</strong>: This Picture of the Week shows Yepun, the fourth Unit Telescope of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, seemingly nibbling at the colourful galactic plane of the Milky Way. But what is our Milky Way actually made of? The recipe consists mostly of stars, planets, lots of gas and dust. Mix them together, bind them with gravity, add a royal serving of dark matter et voilà: you have a galaxy! Like cookies, galaxies come in different shapes and sizes. Our home galaxy is medium-sized and shaped like a disc with spiral arms and an outer halo surrounding it. But since our Solar System is embedded in one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms, some 25 000 light-years from the centre, we only see a fraction of it when we look up. The galactic centre is shrouded in thick layers of cosmic dust. Behind that dust, the supermassive black hole ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2448a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2448a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2448 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">A tower for a kingdom of mirrors</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>25 November 2024</strong>: Standing out sharply against the blue Chilean sky in this Picture of the Week is the central tower of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope’s (ELT). The size of a three-storey building, the tower looks impressive by itself, but it is only a small part of the superstructure that will be the ELT. This skeleton frame will support three of the ELT’s five mirrors, all with different shapes and sizes: M3 (at the bottom of the tower), M4 (at the top) and M5 (at the centre). Together they will guide the light that the telescope catches from space all the way to its instruments, which capture the images and data. In this video you can see how the light travels through the telescope. M4, at the top of the tower, will be the largest adaptive optics mirror ever built. Its surface can be deformed — up to 1000 times per second — ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> <div class="col-md-3 col-sm-6 col-xs-12"> <a href="/public/images/potw2447a/"> <div class="news-wrapper"> <div class="news-image"> <img class="img-responsive" src="https://cdn.eso.org/images/thumb350x/potw2447a.jpg"> </div> <div class="news-description"> <div class="news-id">potw2447 — Picture of the Week</div> <div class="news-title">Capturing the cosmos with laser-sharp precision</div> <div class="news-teaser"><strong>18 November 2024</strong>: Does this look like science fiction? Well, it is science, but definitely not fiction. In this Picture of the Week, the lasers of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) are creating artificial stars in the Chilean sky. It’s one of the clever ways in which engineers outwit the biggest enemy of ground-based telescopes: the Earth’s atmosphere. When stars seem to be twinkling, this is the effect of turbulence in our atmosphere. It distorts the signals from space, leading to blurry images. That is why ESO’s telescopes are located high and dry in the desert: a thinner atmosphere means less disturbance. Modern telescopes use adaptive optics to counteract this disturbance and improve their resolution. This is where the lasers come in. They create artificial stars 90 km up in the sky by making sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere glow. During observations, these guide stars are used as reference points, and a ...</div> </div> <div class="news-readmore">Read more</div> </div>  </a> </div> </div> <div class="row statusbar"><div class="col-md-3"> Showing 1 to 20 of 877 </div><div class="col-md-6"><div class="text-center"><ul class="pagination"><li class="active"><a href="/public/images/potw/list/1/">1</a></li><li><a href="/public/images/potw/list/2/">2</a></li><li><a href="/public/images/potw/list/3/">3</a></li><li><a href="/public/images/potw/list/4/">4</a></li><li><a href="/public/images/potw/list/5/">5</a></li><li><a href="/public/images/potw/list/6/">6</a></li><li><a href="#">...</a></li><li><a href="/public/images/potw/list/44/">44</a></li></ul></div></div><div class="col-md-3 prev-next"><a href="/public/images/potw/list/2/">Next</a></div></div><div class="row"><div class="col-md-12"></div></div> <div class="copyright"> <a href="/public/outreach/copyright/">Usage of ESO Images, Videos, Web texts and Music</a><br /> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div>  <div class="footernote"> <div class=""> <a href="mailto:information@eso.org">Send us your comments!</a> </div> <div class=""> <a href="/public/outreach/newsletters/esonews/">Subscribe to receive news from ESO in your language</a> </div> <div class=""> <a href="https://www.cdn77.com">Accelerated by CDN77</a> </div> <div class=""> <a href="/public/about-eso/privacy/">Terms & Conditions</a> </div> <div class=""> <span class="footer-privacy-settings-link privacy-settings-link">Cookie Settings and Policy</span> </div> </div> <input type='hidden' name='csrfmiddlewaretoken' value='d7RAA8xHC2nbWCZc9PDj3F7FsfDp7boikyQ0uDgGfqAhK0U3yatpMu7a98cH2ZWf' /> <div class="privacy-notice" style="display: block;"> <div class="privacy-notice-close"> <i class="fas fa-times"></i> </div> <h1>Our use of Cookies</h1> <div class="privacy-container centered-container"> <div class="privacy-text-element"> <p>We use cookies that are essential for accessing our websites and using our services. 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