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Concept
Very Large Telescope
Summary
The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is a facility operated by the European Southern Observatory, located on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It consists of four individual telescopes, each equipped with a primary mirror that measures 8.2 meters in diameter. These optical telescopes, named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal, and Yepun (all words for astronomical objects in the Mapuche language), are generally used separately but can be combined to achieve a very high angular resolution. The VLT array is also complemented by four movable Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) with 1.8-meter apertures.
The VLT is capable of observing both visible and infrared wavelengths. Each individual telescope can detect objects that are roughly four billion times fainter than what can be seen with the naked eye. When all the telescopes are combined, the facility can achieve an angular resolution of approximately 0.002 arcsecond. In single telescope mode, the angular resolution is about 0.05 arcseconds.
The VLT is one of the most productive ground-based facilities for astronomy, second only to the Hubble Space Telescope in terms of the number of scientific papers produced from facilities operating at visible wavelengths. Some of the pioneering observations made using the VLT include the first direct image of an exoplanet, the tracking of stars orbiting around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, and observations of the afterglow of the furthest known gamma-ray burst.
The VLT consists of an arrangement of four large (8.2 metre diameter) telescopes (called Unit Telescopes or UTs) with optical elements that can combine them into an astronomical interferometer (VLTI), which is used to resolve small objects. The interferometer also includes a set of four 1.8 meter diameter movable telescopes dedicated to interferometric observations. The first of the UTs started operating in May 1998 and was offered to the astronomical community on 1 April 1999. The other telescopes became operational in 1999 and 2000, enabling multi-telescope VLT capability.
Official source
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