Above the Atacama Horizon

In this image, taken on the territory of the La Silla Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, you can see the Milky Way towering above the horizon and two telescopes bracketing a star-dust ribbon stretching across the entire sky.

The Milky Way over the La Silla Observatory. Source: ESO/P. Horálek

On the right, the tower of the 3.6-meter ESO telescope and the pavilion of its “younger sibling” adjacent to it are visible, now on the working Coudé Auxiliary Telescope. To the left is a fifteen-meter “dish” of the also decommissioned Swedish–ESO Submillimetre Telescope.

In the distance, along the horizon, a chain of other buildings, towers and pavilions of telescopes installed on the top of Mount La Silla stretches through the entire frame. Their silhouettes loom against the sky. In the far distance you can see city lights — although their brightness in absolute units is small, with long exposures, such as this, they become clearly visible. The soft glow to the left of the center of the frame is called the zodiacal light. This is sunlight scattered on dust particles in the plane of the Solar System, called the ecliptic.

You can also admire the magnificent image of the Magellanic Clouds above the Cerro Paranal Observatory.

According to https://www.eso.org