High atop a Chilean [ http://www.cia.gov/…ci.html ] mountain lies one of the premier observatories of the southern sky: the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory [ http://www.ctio.noa…] (CTIO). Pictured above [ http://www.noao.edu…] is the dome surrounding one of the site's [ http://www.ctio.noa…] best known instruments, the 4-meter Blanco Telescope [ http://www.ctio.noa…]. Far behind the dome are thousands of individual stars and diffuse light from three galaxies: the Small Magellanic Cloud [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] (upper left), the Large Magellanic Cloud [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] (lower left), and our Milky Way Galaxy [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…] (right). Visible just to Blanco's right is the famous superposition [ http://www.southern…] of four bright stars known as the Southern Cross [ http://antwrp.gsfc.…]. A single 20 second exposure, this digital image was recorded with a sensitive detector intended for astronomical imaging. The observatory structures are lit solely by starlight.
