The Great Dane

This image shows the dome of the Danish 1.54-metre telescope that has been in operation at La Silla Observatory since 1979.

The telescope has been involved in several breakthrough astronomical observations including the discovery of merging neutron stars as the possible origin of gamma-ray bursts (eso0533) and finding an exoplanet only five times more massive than the Earth (eso0603).

Above the telescope, our home galaxy the Milky Way stretches across the sky with the bright central bulge aligned with the dome of the telescope.

In the background to the right you can spot the dome which once held the MarLy 1-metre telescope.. The telescope saw first light in 1996 and was decommissioned in 2009. Before the MarLy, this dome hosted the 40-centimetre Grand Prisme Objectif, a photographic astrograph. In front of the MarLy dome, the enclosure of the small Marseille 0.36-metre telecope is visible.

Links

• Babak’s image archive at ESO

• Babak’s homepage

• TWAN Gallery

• Babak’s Facebook Page