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Revision as of 15:07, 10 September 2004

The four telescopes of the European Southern Observatory Paranal site. The VLTI (Very Large Telescope Interferometer) building is the low structure in front of the telescopes. Image courtesy of the European Southern Observatory.
File:Vlt.kueyen.arp.750pix.jpg
One of the four telescopes that make up the VLT, named Kueyen. The 8.2 meter mirror can be seen below the large horizontal grey beam (as an oval patch of lightness). Image courtesy of the European Southern Observatory.

The Very Large Telescope Project (VLT) consists of a system of four separate optical telescopes (the Antu telescope, the Kueyen telescope, the Melipal telescope, and the Yepun telescope) organized in an array formation. Each telescope has a 8.2 meter aperture. The project is organized by the European Southern Observatory.

VLT is located at the Paranal Observatory on Cerro Paranal, a 2,635-m high mountain in the Atacama desert in northern Chile.

General information

The VLT consists of a cluster of four large telescopes, and an interferometer (VLTI) which will be used to resolve fine features. The telescopes have been named after the names of some astronomical objects in the local Mapuche language: Antu (The Sun), Kueyen (The Moon), Melipal (The Southern Cross), and Yepun (Venus)

The VLT can be operated in three modes:

  • as a set of independent telescopes
  • as a single large incoherent instrument, for extra light-gathering capacity
  • as a single large coherent interferometric instrument, for extra resolution

In its full interferometric operating mode, the four telescopes provide the same light gathering ability as a single 16m telescope, making it the largest optical telescope in the world. The VLT is intended to achieve an effective angular resolution of 0.001 arcsecond at a wavelength of 1 µm. This is an angle of 0.000000005 radians, equivalent to resolving a target 2 meters across at the distance between the Earth and Moon.

This should easily resolve the 5-metre wide Lunar Module bases left on the Moon by the Apollo moon missions, and a group of European scientists intends to do just that to challenge the accusation that the moon landings were faked by NASA.

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