Orion over Paranal

One of the Auxiliary Telescopes at ESO's VLT is silhoutted against the starry sky over Paranal, in which the constellation Orion is visible. This time-lapse sequence was made using a 135mm lens mounted on a DSLR camera.

Paranal has about 300 clear nights per year, and the Auxiliary Telescopes are among the many advanced instruments that help the VLT to take advantage of the excellent viewing conditions to study the Universe.