Gazing at the Milky Way
The Milky Way spills across the night sky above the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. Commissioned in 1974, the telescope was once the largest optical telescope south of the equator and remains an astronomical powerhouse to this day. This photograph captures the open dome of the telescope as it gazes upwards at the luminous band of stars and dust lanes making up our galaxy. Like all telescopes at CTIO, the Blanco benefits from the crystal-clear observing conditions in northern Chile — as you can see from this star-filled image!
Credit:CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/B. Tafreshi
About the Image
Id: | iotw2027a |
Type: | Photographic |
Release date: | July 1, 2020, 9 a.m. |
Size: | 4580 x 6870 px |
About the Object
Category: | CTIO |
Image Formats
Large JPEG
9.0 MB
Publication TIFF 4K
19.5 MB
Publication JPEG
3.2 MB
Screensize JPEG
632.6 KB