Night view of the ELT under construction atop Cerro Armazones

This image, taken in late June 2023, shows a webcam image of the construction site of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope at Cerro Armazones, in Chile's Atacama Desert. There, engineers and construction workers are currently assembling the structure of the telescope dome at a staggering pace. Visibly changing each day, the steel structure will soon acquire the familiar round shape typical of telescope domes.

The starry background is dominated by the core of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, and the Large and Small Magellanic clouds, two dwarf galaxies that orbit our own.