Four eyes

Within this gigantic frame lies the European Space Agency’s aptly named Very Large Telescope (VLT)… well, some of it, at least. Christened Yepun after the Mapuche people’s word for Sirius, it’s the fourth of the four 8.2-metre telescopes that combine to make up the VLT. Yepun came online on 4 September 2000. Antu (Sun) began observing in 1998, Kueyen (Moon) in 1999 and Melipal (the Southern Cross) in January 2000. All four are located in Chile’s arid, high-altitude Atacama Desert, where the dry, thin air provides ground-based telescopes like this with the clearest view into space available on Earth.