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This image captures the route from the Residencia � the guesthouse for visitors to ESOs Paranal Observatory� to the breathtaking heart of the Milky Way, which covers the entire night sky.

The site shown here is Cerro Paranal, home to ESOs Very Large Telescope (VLT), a telescope comprising four 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes. The VLT can also act as an interferometer in the form of the appropriately-named VLT Interferometer, or VLTI, by gathering additional light from four smaller Auxiliary Telescopes, which can be independently moved around and placed in different configurations. One of these Auxiliary Telescopes is shown in this image, gazing at the sky with its dome wide open.

The road from the observatory to the Residencia appears as a shining thread, weaving amongst the rocky outcrops and hills of the desert environment. The yellow glow is caused by dim security lights � the street lighting is kept to a minimum in order to avoid unnecessary light pollution.

This stunning image of the clear Chilean sky shows a speckling of bright stars and distant galaxies across the frame, all suspended above one of the four Unit Telescopes (UTs) of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). This is the fourth UT and it is known as Yepun (Venus).

Two objects seen in this frame are more famous than their neighbours. In the left hand portion of the image is a fairly prominent galaxy that forms a streak across the sky � Messier 31, or the Andromeda Galaxy. Upwards and to the right of this smudge is a bright star, which in turn points upwards to a galaxy that lies roughly along the same extended line. This star is named Beta Andromedae � otherwise known as Mirach � and the second galaxy is Messier 33 (at the top of the frame). These two galaxies are thought to have interacted in the past, forming a bridge of hydrogen gas that spans the gap between them.