VLT

The Very Large Telescope array (VLT) is the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy at the beginning of the third Millennium. It is the world's most advanced optical instrument, consisting 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.

Vista

VISTA ― the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy ― is part of ESO’s Paranal Observatory. VISTA works at near-infrared wavelengths and is the world’s largest survey telescope. Its , wide field of view and very sensitive detectors are revealing a completely new view of the southern sky. The telescope is housed on the peak adjacent to the one hosting the ESO Very Large Telescope and shares the same exceptional observing conditions. VISTA has a that is 4.1 metres across. In photographic terms it can be thought of as a 67 megapixel digital camera with a 13 000 mm f/3.25 mirror lens. At the heart of the telescope is a huge three-tonne with 16 state-of-the-art infrared-sensitive detectors.

Vst

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) is the latest major telescope to be installed at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. It is one of the largest telescope in the world designed for surveying the sky in visible light. This state-of-the-art 2.6-m telescope has joined the ESO VLT on Cerro Paranal, a perfect location for ground-based astronomical observations. It is equipped with an enormous 268-megapixel camera called that is the successor of the very successful Wide Field Imager currently installed at the 2.2-m MPG/ESO Telescope on La Silla.Like the VLT, the VST covers a wide-range of wavelengths from ultraviolet through optical to the near-infrared (0.3 to 1.0 microns). But whereas the largest telescopes, such as the VLT, can only study a small part of the sky at any one time, the VST is designed to photograph large areas quickly and deeply.With a total field view of 1°x 1°, twice as broad as the full Moon, the VST supports the VLT with wide-angle imaging by detecting and pre-characterising sources, which the VLT Unit Telescopes can then observe further.The VST comprises two , a primary mirror (M1) with a diameter of 2.61 m and a smaller secondary mirror (M2) with a diameter of 93.8 cm. The telescope is also equipped with a single dedicated focal plane instrument: OmegaCAM. This huge (16k x 16k pixel) CCD camera was built by an international consortium of five institutions: the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA), the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, , the Astronomical Observatory of Padova and ESO.

NTT

The 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) was inaugurated in 1989. It broke new ground for telescope engineering and design and was the first in the world to have a computer-controlled main mirror.The main mirror is flexible and its shape is actively adjusted by actuators during observations to preserve the optimal image quality. The secondary mirror position is also actively controlled in three directions.This technology, developed by ESO, known as active optics, is now applied to all major modern telescopes, such as the Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal and the future Extremely Large Telescope.The design of the octagonal enclosure housing the NTT is another technological breakthrough. The telescope dome is relatively small, and is ventilated by a system of flaps that makes air flow smoothly across the mirror, reducing turbulence and leading to sharper images.

ESO 3.6

The ESO 3.6-metre telescope started operations in 1977 and set Europe the exciting engineering challenge of constructing and operating a telescope in the 3–4-metre class in the Southern Hemisphere.Over the years, the ESO 3.6-metre telescope has been constantly upgraded, including the installation of a new secondary mirror that has kept the telescope in its place as one of the most efficient and productive engines of astronomical research.The telescope hosts , the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, the world's foremost exoplanet hunter. HARPS is a spectrograph with unrivalled precision and is the most successful finder of low-mass exoplanets to date.

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