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The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is the main facility for European ground-based optical astronomy. It consists of four Unit Telescopes (UTs) with primary mirrors of 8.2-m diameter and four movable 1.8-m-diameter telescopes, situated in the north of Chile. It features a very complete suite of instruments, large-field imagers, adaptive optics-corrected cameras and spectrographs, as well as high-resolution and multi-object spectrographs, and the VLT covers a broad spectral region, from ultraviolet (300-nm) to mid-infrared (24-μm) wavelengths. It is also able to work in recombined or interferometric mode. This is the world’s most important facility for visible/infrared astronomy.
Overview
The Very Large Telescope array (VLT) is operated by an international organization, the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Located on Cerro Paranal in Northern Chile (70 o 24′ 11″ W; 24 o 37′ 31″ S) at an altitude of 2,635 m, it operates at wavelengths ranging from...
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References and Further Reading
The VLT white book – European Southern Observatory
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© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Rouan, D. (2014). VLT. In: Amils, R., et al. Encyclopedia of Astrobiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27833-4_1668-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27833-4_1668-2
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Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27833-4
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