New Technology Telescope bathed in red

Rear view of New Technology Telescope (NTT) at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, located on the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile. Inaugurated in 1989, the 3.58-metre NTT was the first telescope in the world to have a computer-controlled main mirror. This mirror is flexible; in a process called adaptive optics, its shape is adjusted during observations to obtain maximal image quality.