Astronomers Paradise

Astronomer's Paradise is the first episode of Atacama Starry Nights timelapse movie series. Cerro Paranal is truly an astronomers paradise with its stunningly dark, steady and transparent sky. Located in the barren Atacama Desert of Chile it is home to some of the world's leading telescopes. Operated by the European Southern Observatory (eso.org) the Very Large Telescope (VLT) is located on Paranal, composed of four 8 m telescopes which can combine their light to make a giant telescope by interferometry. Four smaller auxiliary telescopes, each 1.8 m in aperture, are important elements of the VLT interferometer.

This footage is made during an imaging expedition to Paranal assigned by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). All video rights reserved by Christoph Malin (christophmalin.com) and Babak Tafreshi of The World at Night (TWAN) program (twanight.org). The inside observatory video is contributed by Stephane Guisard (astrosurf.com/sguisard).

The music theme is by Carbon Based Lifeforms (carbonbasedlifeforms.net). Song Arecibo extract from the album [Twentythree], write & produced by Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Segerstad, published by Ultimae (ultimae.com). Music remix by Tiny Types.