Massive antenna, silent mirror
Crédit : J. Rodrigues/ESO, CC BY 4.0
In today’s Picture of the Week, the decommissioned Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope (SEST), at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, shows its 15-metre diameter surface, reflecting the starry night sky of one of the most pristine sites for astronomical observations on Earth. SEST was, at the time of its first light in 1987, the only large telescope in the southern hemisphere designed for submillimetre astronomy. It studied radiation with longer wavelengths than visible light, coming from cold clouds of gas and dust where stars form. To catch these weak signals and produce sharp images, large collecting areas are needed, resulting in telescopes as massive as SEST. “Despite knowing about its 15-meter diameter beforehand, I was amazed by its size,” says José Rodrigues, visiting astronomer at La Silla and photographer who captured this image. While no longer in operation, SEST remains a silent mirror of La Silla’s dark night sky, coloured here by the faint natural airglow coming from atoms in our atmosphere.
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