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ESOonMastodon1d ago
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
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Analysis Summary
Four lasers at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile created artificial guide stars 90 km above Earth as part of the GRAVITY+ upgrade, combining light from the facility's four eight-meter telescopes to correct atmospheric blur. The first test observations targeted the Tarantula Nebula and revealed that a previously identified massive star is actually a binary system, demonstrating the new system's dramatic improvement in observational precision. This milestone unlocks the southern sky for high-resolution observations of faint and distant objects, including early-universe black holes and planet-forming disks around young stars.
Claims Analysis (4)
“The beams come from lasers installed on telescopes of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile”
Four lasers were involved, one from each of the eight-meter telescopes at Paranal
“The artificial stars are created 90 km above the ground”
A bright 'fake' star is created 90 km above Earth's surface by each laser
“The lasers create artificial stars to correct atmospheric turbulence”
The four beams produced bright artificial 'stars,' which act as guides to help astronomers correct for the distortions caused by adaptive optics
“Four telescopes are observing the same target”
Four lasers were involved, one from each of the eight-meter telescopes at Paranal, deployed as part of the GRAVITY+ upgrade to combine light from all four telescopes
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