JOHN BARTLETT, BYLINE: When night falls over the Paranal Observatory, which operates one of the world's most powerful telescopes, the skies above are dusted with brilliant constellations and nebulae.

With its clear, dark skies, northern Chile is home to two fifths of the world's astronomical infrastructure, but could that be under threat with increasing urbanisation and mining development ...

The moon, the Milky Way, Saturn, Venus, Jupiter Mars, Neptune, Uranus and comet C/2024 G3 seen above the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert. . | Credit ...

In February 2025, conditions were just right to catch a "planetary party" above the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Paranal Observatory. In new photos of this planet parade, the wispy glow ...

The Paranal Observatory is a world-leading location for cutting-edge astronomical research - but its future is under acute threat. Just a few kilometers from the ELT and VLT, the US energy supplier ...

The area is home to the Paranal Obser­vatory, which houses the European South­ern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, used by astronomers to search the Milky Way with “unparalleled clarity ...

The European Commission recently established a planned gamma-ray observatory as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium, or ERIC, which will expedite the construction of the telescope and ...

New images from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Paranal Observatory suggest that the galaxy, known as NGC 3640, may soon merge with a smaller galactic ...

ESO's VLT has been instrumental in observations of this asteroid because of its mirror size and superb sensitivity, as well as the excellent dark skies at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile ...

The light pollution created by the industrial facilities would have significant impacts on the quality of the skies above the Paranal Observatory, astronomers argue, and would limit the VLT's ...