Very Large Telescope (VLT)

These are the housings of the four telescopes that make up the Very Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal in Chile.

"The Very Large Telescope array (VLT) consists of four Unit Telescopes with main mirrors of 8.2m diameter and four movable 1.8m diameter Auxiliary Telescopes. The telescopes can work together, to form a giant 'interferometer', the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer, allowing astronomers to see details up to 25 times finer than with the individual telescopes. The light beams are combined in the VLTI using a complex system of mirrors in underground tunnels where the light paths must be kept equal to distances less than 1/1000 mm over a hundred metres. With this kind of precision the VLTI can reconstruct images with an angular resolution of milliarcseconds, equivalent to distinguishing the two headlights of a car at the distance of the Moon."

"The 8.2m diameter Unit Telescopes can also be used individually. With one such telescope, images of celestial objects as faint as magnitude 30 can be obtained in a one-hour exposure. This corresponds to seeing objects that are four billion (four thousand million) times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye."

The VLT is located on Cerro Paranal in Chile. Cerro Paranal is a mountain in the Atacama desert of northern Chile that is home to the Paranal Observatory. The elevation is 2,635 metres (8,645 ft) above sea level.

References:

ESO-Very Large Telescope