Cerro Tololo Light Show

Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF NOIRLab, is depicted here with the Milky Way and several nebulae within it, including the Lagoon Nebula and Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. A number of CTIO telescopes are captured in this 360-degree panorama, including, from left to right: the UBC Southern Observatory, the SMARTS 1.0-meter Telescope, the Curtis Schmidt Telescope, the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, the SMARTS 1.5-meter Telescope and the SMARTS 0.9-meter Telescope.

Various other, more unusual night sky phenomena are also visible. The white glow on the left of the image is zodiacal light, arising from interplanetary dust illuminated by the Sun. The green, orange, and reddish “clouds” near the horizon are airglow, caused by trace gasses in the upper atmosphere.