The presented photo was taken on the territory of the La Silla Observatory. It demonstrates the “veteran” of the European Southern Observatory — the 3.6-meter ESO reflector.
The 3.6-meter reflector is one of ESO’s oldest working telescopes. It saw its “first light” in 1976. Since then, the telescope has been upgraded several times. So, in 2008, a high-precision beam velocity spectrograph HARPS was mounted on a 3.6-meter reflector. And in June of this year, the NIRPS infrared spectrograph joined it. Thanks to this, the 3.6-meter ESO reflector has become the world’s largest specialized complex for the search and exploration of exoplanets.
The veteran telescope is located in a larger tower (the left part of the image). An Auxiliary Telescope (CAT) is installed in a smaller tower, observations on which were discontinued in 1998. One of its main goals was to determine the age of the stars of the Milky Way. Both telescopes are connected by a bridge. It was intended to transmit light from the CAT to a 3.6-meter reflector. Thanks to this, both telescopes could work in tandem using different receivers.
In the picture you can also see the star tracks drawn by the stars as they orbit the south pole of the world. They are formed when shooting with a long shutter speed.
Earlier we talked about the device of high-tech VLT windshields — another iconic ESO telescope.
According to https://www.eso.org
Follow us on Twitter to get the most interesting space news in time
https://twitter.com/ust_magazine
