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Loading contentESO's optical/infrared array of four 8.2-metre telescopes at Cerro Paranal in Chile's Atacama Desert.
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How Very Large Telescope (VLT) connects across Asteria Star — scientific, cultural, and astrological links are kept separate.
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The barred spiral galaxy that contains the Solar System, the Sun, and all stars visible to the naked eye.
ESO is a 16-nation intergovernmental organisation that builds and operates major ground-based observatories in Chile, including the VLT and the future ELT.
ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert is home to the Very Large Telescope, one of the most productive ground-based facilities in astronomy.
Visible light is the band the human eye sees and the traditional domain of optical telescopes.
Infrared light penetrates dust and reveals cool objects — forming stars, planets, and distant galaxies.
MUSE on the VLT records a spectrum at every point in its field of view, mapping the motions and composition of galaxies.
SPHERE on the VLT is an extreme adaptive-optics instrument that directly images exoplanets and circumstellar discs.
2MASS J01033563-5515561 AB b is a gas giant orbiting 2MASS J01033563-5515561 A, discovered in 2013 by the direct imaging.
2MASS J12073346-3932539 b is a gas giant orbiting 2MASS J12073346-3932539, discovered in 2004 by the direct imaging.
AB Pic b is a gas giant orbiting AB Pic, discovered in 2005 by the direct imaging.
AF Lep b is a gas giant orbiting AF Lep, discovered in 2023 by the direct imaging.
b Cen AB b is a gas giant orbiting b Cen A, discovered in 2021 by the direct imaging.
Barnard b is a terrestrial planet orbiting Barnard's star, discovered in 2024 by the radial velocity method.
bet Pic b is a gas giant orbiting bet Pic, discovered in 2008 by the direct imaging.
CT Cha b is a gas giant orbiting CT Cha, discovered in 2007 by the direct imaging.
DENIS-P J082303.1-491201 b is a gas giant orbiting DENIS-P J082303.1-491201, discovered in 2013 by the astrometry.
GJ 676 A c is a gas giant orbiting GJ 676 A, discovered in 2016 by the radial velocity method.
GQ Lup b is a gas giant orbiting GQ Lup, discovered in 2004 by the direct imaging.
HD 100546 b is a gas giant orbiting HD 100546, discovered in 2014 by the direct imaging.
HD 135344 A b is a gas giant orbiting HD 135344 A, discovered in 2025 by the direct imaging.
HD 143811 AB b is a gas giant orbiting HD 143811 A, discovered in 2025 by the direct imaging.
HD 169142 b is a gas giant orbiting HD 169142, discovered in 2023 by the direct imaging.
HD 22496 b is a super-earth orbiting HD 22496, discovered in 2021 by the radial velocity method.
HD 284149 AB b is a gas giant orbiting HD 284149 A, discovered in 2017 by the direct imaging.
HD 95086 b is a gas giant orbiting HD 95086, discovered in 2013 by the direct imaging.
HIP 65426 b is a gas giant orbiting HIP 65426, discovered in 2017 by the direct imaging.
HIP 79098 AB b is a gas giant orbiting HIP 79098 AB, discovered in 2019 by the direct imaging.
HIP 81208 C b is a gas giant orbiting HIP 81208 C, discovered in 2023 by the direct imaging.
L 363-38 b is a super-earth orbiting L 363-38, discovered in 2023 by the radial velocity method.
mu2 Sco b is a gas giant orbiting mu2 Sco, discovered in 2022 by the direct imaging.
PDS 70 b is a gas giant orbiting PDS 70, discovered in 2018 by the direct imaging.
TOI-771 c is a terrestrial planet orbiting TOI-771, discovered in 2025 by the radial velocity method.
TYC 8998-760-1 b is a gas giant orbiting TYC 8998-760-1, discovered in 2020 by the direct imaging.
TYC 8998-760-1 c is a gas giant orbiting TYC 8998-760-1, discovered in 2020 by the direct imaging.
VHS J125601.92-125723.9 b is a gas giant orbiting VHS J125601.92-125723.9, discovered in 2015 by the direct imaging.
WISPIT 1 b is a gas giant orbiting WISPIT 1, discovered in 2025 by the direct imaging.
WISPIT 1 c is a gas giant orbiting WISPIT 1, discovered in 2025 by the direct imaging.
WISPIT 2 b is a gas giant orbiting WISPIT 2, discovered in 2025 by the direct imaging.
Reinhard Genzel led one of two teams that, over decades, tracked the orbits of stars whipping around the centre of the Milky Way.
Over three decades, the teams of Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez tracked stars orbiting the centre of the Milky Way, revealing a four-million-solar-mass black hole, Sagittarius A*.
The Milky Way arching over ESO's Very Large Telescope at Paranal, Chile — one of the darkest skies on Earth.
The archive of the European Southern Observatory, holding the data of its ground-based telescopes in Chile — the Very Large Telescope and its partners — for reuse by astronomers worldwide.
An artificial star created by shining a laser into the upper atmosphere, exciting sodium atoms ~90 km up to glow. It gives adaptive optics a bright reference point anywhere on the sky — not just near a real bright star — so the shape of the atmosphere's blur can be measured and corrected.
Combining the light of separate optical or infrared telescopes to reach angular resolutions no single telescope could — far harder than in the radio because the light waves must be kept in step to a fraction of their wavelength. The VLT's four unit telescopes can be combined this way.
ALMA is an international radio observatory of millimeter and submillimeter antennas located on the Chajnantor plateau in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.
Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico operated a 305-metre radio dish — for decades the largest single-dish radio telescope — until its collapse in 2020.
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile is a NOIRLab site whose telescopes carried out the Dark Energy Survey.
The next-generation ground-based observatory for very-high-energy gamma rays, an array of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes being built across two sites — one in the northern hemisphere on La Palma and one in the southern hemisphere in Chile — to catch the faint blue flashes that gamma rays make in the atmosphere. The largest such observatory ever built.
A proposed United States third-generation gravitational-wave observatory with arms up to forty kilometres long — a scaled-up successor to LIGO that, with the Einstein Telescope, would open the distant gravitational-wave universe.
A proposed European third-generation gravitational-wave observatory, to be built underground in a triangle of ten-kilometre arms. Its far greater sensitivity would detect compact-binary mergers across most of the observable universe.
Facts on this topic will be cited from these primary and reference sources.
European missions, observatories, and space science imagery.