The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) array has taken some amazing pictures in the past, but sometimes some of the best scenery taken by the telescope happens right here in our own planet. I’m not talking about pointing the giant thing at the ground, or even a bird, I’m sure if they did, A- it would cost a lot of money and B- you’d be looking at the hairs on a flea.
The VLT is located on top of a mountain in the Peruvian Desert, and you can go out there without a telescope, just your bear site and the sky looks beautiful. If you look at the video below, it looks as if you’re looking through the telescope it self, but in reality is just video of the night sky… now I know why astronomers love their job so much.
As you see the video, it makes you realize the vast number of stars out there, and were still just sitting there, waiting for someone to say hello back to us.
The yellow streak you see fired into the sky a few times is a laser used to calibrate the telescope for distortions caused by the Earth’s atmosphere. It sees how the straight laser beam is affected, and then applies corresponding corrections to the collected image.
Check out the video below, it starts off kind of slow, but after the 1:20 mark, it really starts to pick up some speed. Enjoy!
Video from YouTube, via Dvice
