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VLT - Paranal Observatory, Chile

by

Alex Tudorica/Novapix

Reference

o-vlt01-00224

Date

2017-11-14

The four 8m telescopes telescopes, named Antu (Sun), Kueyen (Moon), Melipal (Southern Cross), and Yepun (Venus) form a very versatile observatory. They can be used as a single large telescope that adds (incoherently) the light from all four, in order to achieve the light gathering ability of a single 16m telescope. Also, their light can be combined in a coherent manner in order to achieve a resolving power equivalent to the one of a telescope with a diameter as large as the baseline between the units. Of course, all the telescopes can be used individually, which is usually the default mode of operation.