La Silla at night

This serene and magnificent view from the European Southern Observatory (ESO)’s La

Silla Observatory, Chile is one of beauty. The arrangement of innovative telescopes includes the Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler telescope and the New Technology Telescope (NTT), their characteristic octogonal housing easily spotted straight ahead.

Although there are distant city lights glowing from Santiago de Chile in the north - as seen in this image - one of the primary reasons why La Silla is such an ideal site for astronomical observations is thanks to its location on the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert, away from interference at an altitude of 2400 metres.