A Cerro Tololo Sky
High atop a
Chilean mountain lies one of the
premier observatories of the southern sky: the
Cerro Tololo Inter-American
Observatory (CTIO).
Pictured
above is the dome surrounding one of
the
site's best known instruments, the
4-meter
Blanco Telescope.
Far behind the dome are thousands of individual
stars and diffuse light from three galaxies: the
Small Magellanic Cloud
(upper left), the
Large Magellanic Cloud
(lower left), and our
Milky Way Galaxy (right).
Also visible just to Blanco's right is the
famous
superposition of four bright stars known as the
Southern
Cross.
A single 20 second exposure, this digital image was recorded with
a sensitive detector intended for astronomical imaging.
The observatory structures are lit solely by starlight.