English: Brilliant blue stars litter the southern sky and the galactic bulge of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, hangs serenely above the horizon in this spectacular shot of ESO’s Paranal Observatory.

This image was taken atop Cerro Paranal in Chile, home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). In the foreground, the open dome of one of the four 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescopes can be seen. The four Auxiliary Telescopes can be utilised together, to form the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI).

The plane of the Milky Way is dotted with bright regions of hot gas. The very bright star that looks white in this image towards the upper left corner of the frame is Antares — the brightest star in Scorpius and the fifteenth brightest star in the night sky. (It is actually reddish.) The blue stars going off to the right and then down in a sort of hook are the body and tail of Scorpius. The upper red splotch of the two near the centre of the image is the Cat's Paw Nebula, NGC 6334.