Aerial view of Paranal Observatory

Aerial view of the Paranal summit with the observatory platform on which most of the VLT buildings are in place. All four enclosures for the 8.2-m Unit Telescopes have now been closed. Also seen are the concrete supports for the smaller, movable telescopes of the VLT Interferometric Array and the central, (mostly) subterranean laboratory in which the light beams from all the telescopes will come together at the interferometric instruments. The current observations with the UT1, as well as those with the other Unit Telescopes take place from the VLT control building, on a smaller and slightly lower platform to the lower left.