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The centre of the Milky Way emerges between two telescopes at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, in Chile’s Atacama Desert, with splatters of light embedded in dark clouds.
Two gleaming nebulae can be seen between the telescopes: the Trifid Nebula (left) and the Lagoon Nebula (right). They can be found in the constellation Sagittarius, and their red colour comes from hydrogen atoms ionised by young stars in these clouds. The Trifid nebula also shows a blue tint caused by dust reflecting the light of some of these stars. But most of the dust in this image appears as dark clouds: when not lit up by nearby stars, interstellar dust clouds block the light behind them, thus appearing black against the starry background.
The telescope to the left is ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT). It was a pioneer in active optics, a technology that maintains the telescope mirror’s shape during observations despite deformations due to weight or temperature. To the right we see the ESO 3.6-meter telescope, home to the exoplanet hunting instruments HARPS and NIRPS, and a very important telescope for the astronomer who took this picture, José Rodrigues. “It is very special as I grew up with a poster of the 3.6 m in my room, dreaming of using it to find exoplanets” –– a dream he has now realised as an exoplanet researcher.