Dark clouds and a starry night sky over ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile

Dark clouds and a starry night sky over ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile

The center of the Milky Way emerges between two telescopes at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert with splatters of light embedded in dark clouds.

Two gleaming nebulae can be seen between the telescopes: the Trifid Nebula (left) and the Lagoon Nebula (right). They can be found in the constellation Sagittarius, and their red color comes from hydrogen atoms ionized by young stars in these clouds. The Trifid Nebula also shows a blue tint caused by dust reflecting the light of some of these stars. However, most of the dust in this image appears as dark clouds. When not lit up by nearby stars, interstellar dust clouds block the light behind them, thus appearing black against the starry background.

The telescope to the left is the European Southern Observatory’s New Technology Telescope (NTT). It was a pioneer in active optics, a technology that maintains the telescope mirror’s shape during observations despite deformations due to weight or temperature. To the right we see the European Southern Observatory (ESO) 3.6-meter telescope, home to the exoplanet hunting instruments High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) and Near Infra-Red Planet Searcher (NIRPS), and a very important telescope for the astronomer that took this picture, José Rodrigues. 

“It is very special as I grew up with a poster of the 3.6 m in my room, dreaming of using it to find exoplanets”––a dream he has now realized as an exoplanet researcher.

Image Description: The image shows two white telescopes on two hills on the bottom left and right of the frame. In the background, the night sky features a lot of stars, and, in the center of it, a dark cloud, in tones of black and brown, that goes from top to bottom. In the bottom of this cloud, spots shining in red and pink, and blue, appear. Another telescope can be seen further away in the picture.

Credit: J. Rodrigues/ESO
Release Date: Sept. 28, 2026

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