ESO’s Very Large Telescope becomes fully functional

BBC : Yesterday an international team of astronomers and engineers succeeded in linking all four of the large telescopes that make up the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, located on Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Each of the four has been up and running since at least 2000. However, when linked together via interferometry, they form the biggest ground-based optical telescope on Earth, which offers very high spatial resolution and zooming capabilities. “From now on we’ll be able to observe things we were not able to observe before,” said Frederic Gonte, head of instrumentation.