Almost Touching: The Milky Way & The Swedish-ESO Telescope

Almost Touching: The Milky Way & The Swedish-ESO Telescope

Night image of the Swedish-ESO Telescope with an overall grey and dark blue color. The telescope is a big antenna seen sideways, taking up most of the left part of the image. To the right of the telescope the Milky Way dominates the sky and contains dark and bright areas. The Chilean mountains shape the horizon above the ground in the lower part of the image. This Picture of the Week shows a beautiful meeting between the Swedish–ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST) and the Milky Way, apparently almost touching each other. This shot was taken at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory, located on the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert, at an altitude of 2400 meters.

Light and darkness shape the Milky Way as it stretches across the night sky. The dark patches are dust clouds blocking the light behind them, coming from millions of stars in the central region of our galaxy.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/A. Ghizzi Panizza

Release Date: March 20, 2023

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