Very Large Telescope facts for kids
| Very Large Telescope | |
The four Unit Telescopes that form the VLT together with the Auxiliary Telescopes
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| Organization | European Southern Observatory (ESO) |
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| Location | Paranal Observatory, Atacama desert, Chile |
| Coordinates | 24°37′38″S 70°24′15″W / 24.62722°S 70.40417°W |
| Altitude | 2,635 m |
| Weather | >340 clear nights/year |
| Wavelength | 300 nm – 20 μm (visible, near- and mid-infrared) |
| First light | 1998 (for the first Unit Telescope) |
| Telescope style | Ritchey-Chrétien |
| Diameter | 4 x 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (UT), plus 4 x 1.8-metre moveable Auxiliary Telescopes (AT) |
| Mounting | Altazimuth |
| Website | Very Large Telescope |
The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is a telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory. It is on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile.
The VLT consists of four separate telescopes, each with a main mirror 8.2m across. They are often used separately, but they can be used together to get a very high angular resolution. The observatory also has four movable Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) of 1.8 m aperture.
The VLT operates at visible and infrared wavelengths. Each individual telescope can detect objects roughly four billion times fainter than can be seen with the naked eye. When all the telescopes are combined, the facility can achieve an angular resolution of about 0.001 arc-second. This is equivalent to roughly two metres at the distance of the Moon.
The VLT is the most productive ground-based facility for astronomy: only the Hubble Space Telescope leads to more scientific papers in observational astronomy.
Among the pioneering observations carried out using the VLT are the first direct image of an exoplanet, the tracking of individual stars moving around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, and observations of the afterglow of the furthest known gamma-ray burst.
Auxiliary Telescopes
The four smaller 1.8-metre ATs are available and dedicated to interferometry. This allows the VLT to operate every night on visible and infrared wavelengths.
Related pages
Images for kids
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VLT's four Unit Telescopes
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The SPHERE instrument attached to the VLT Unit Telescope 3.
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The interior of Antu (UT1), meaning "sun" in the Mapuche language.
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VLT's Next-generation Laser Launch Telescope.
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All four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes and 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes were connected for the first time on March 17, 2011, becoming the VLT Interferometer (VLTI) with six baselines.
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VLT’s Laser Guide Star in action.
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Bird’s Eye View of the Very Large Telescope
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Laser guide star used on one of the UTs
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A 360 degree view of the VLT and VST
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The triplet of galaxies NGC 6769, 6770 and NGC 6771, as observed with the VIMOS instrument on Melipal
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A storm on Saturn observed by the VLT
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The Sombrero Galaxy as seen by the VLT's FORS1 instrument
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The central 5,500 light-years wide region of the spiral galaxy NGC 1097, obtained with the NACO adaptive optics on the VLT
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One of the first images from the VIMOS facility, showing the famous "Antennae Galaxies" (NGC 4038/9)
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VLT image of the nebula LHA 120-N 44 surrounding the star cluster NGC 1929
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The nebula around the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse taken with the VLT's VISIR infrared camera
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The star cluster and surrounding nebula NGC 371 taken using the FORS1 instrument on the VLT
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The 2010 Perseids meteor shower over the VLT
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