ESO on Nostr: This isn't a scene from Star Wars. What you're looking at is the Tarantual Nebula, ...

This isn't a scene from Star Wars.

What you're looking at is the Tarantual Nebula, and those beams come from the lasers installed on the telescopes of our Very Large Telescope Interferometer in #Chile. They create artificial stars 90 km above the ground to correct atmospheric turbulence, allowing the VLTI to observe faint targets.

But why are four telescopes observing the same target? Find out: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2616a/

📷 A. Berdeu/ESO

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science