Night over Cerro Armazones

This nighttime time-lapse, from sunset till sunrise, reveals the Milky Way as it rises above the site testing equipment on top of Cerro Armazones, in the Chilean Atacama Desert. The neighbouring galaxies of the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, are also visible in the right of the images.

Cerro Armazones was chosen as the site for the planned European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), which, with its 40-metre-class diameter mirror, will be the world’s biggest eye on the sky.