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.
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.
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.
The VLTs are equiped with a large set of instruments permitting observations to be performed from the near-UV to the mid-IR (ie a large fraction of the light wavelengths accessible from the surface of the Earth), with the full range of techniques including high-resolution spectroscopy, multi-object spectroscopy, imaging, and high-resolution imaging.
In particular, the VLT has several Adaptive optics systems, which at infrared wavelengths correct for the effects of the atmospheric turbulence, providing images almost as sharp as if the telescope was in space.
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