The Milky Way Over Paranal
Stéphane Guisard (Los Cielos de Chile)
It's not the sky that's falling. More accurately,
the Earth is rising.
The Earth's rotation gives a continually changing view to all Earth observers,
including those measuring the universe at the
Paranal Observatory.
The observatory's four, massive 8.2 meter telescope units
are situated on top of the 2,600 meter high mountain,
Cerro Paranal,
in the dry Atacama Desert in northern Chile.
The individual unit
telescopes can be used separately or in combination.
Their names, Antu, Kueyen, Melipal, and
Yepun, are taken from
the Mapuche language.
Fittingly they translate to Sun, Moon, Evening Star, and
Southern Cross.
Together they are fittingly known as the
European Southern Observatory's
Very Large Telescope.
A higher time resolution version of the above movie is available here.