Paranal Observatory (VLT), Chile

This is a whole system of four main antennas with a diameter of 8.2 m and four auxiliary antennas of 1.8 m, combined into an astronomical interferometer. Scientists from the European Southern Observatory work here. The facility is located in the highlands of the Andes at an altitude of over 2.5 km above sea level in the Chilean Atacama Desert. This arrangement of the telescope gives a great advantage: the sky in this area is cloudless almost all year round, which allows observations to be carried out continuously, in addition, the rarefied atmosphere allows avoiding distortions created by the movement of air masses. Therefore, the observatory receives a signal in the optical and mid-infrared ranges, and processes the material received by a supercomputer capable of performing up to seventeen quadrillion operations per second.