The VLT looks deep into a spiral galaxy

The photo is a combination of two 30 min exposures, obtained in succession with the VLT UT1. For both, the image quality is excellent (round images at 0.38 and 0.40 arcsec, respectively), despite the long exposure time. This once more demonstrates the ability of the telescope to track with very high precision over long time intervals, already at this early stage of commissioning.

This is a combination of two 30-min exposures through a 400 Å-wide optical filtre centered at 5100 Å (green; image quality 0.38 arcsec) and a 400 Å-wide optical filtre centered at 5300 Å (green; image quality 0.40 arcsec) with the VLT Test Camera. Individual frames were flat-fielded and cleaned for cosmics and then combined. The resulting FWHM is 0.39 arcsec. No further image processing was done. The field measures 1.5 x 1.5 arcmin. North is to the upper right; East is to the upper left.