so now we're somewhere to the south of antofagasta, right along the coast, at an elevation of around 8500 ft, if i'm not mistaken. if that weren't the pacific ocean (covered by fog) out there, we'd still be on mars.
here's adam and anjni standing on the edge of the world.
one of the vlt unit telescopes (there are 4). these suckers all have 8.4m mirrors, all fitted out with insane active optics systems...that basically means that there are hundreds of little motors pushing and pulling the mirror into strategic shapes that compensate for effects that would otherwise mess up the image. and yes, those sexy blue hats you see there are the protective headgear everyone who goes up on the top of the mountain has to wear. *sigh*
so now we're inside the dome of one of the unit telescopes, who knows which one. the picture's blurry, but maybe you can make out the people under it for scale. the big white assembly is part of the support system for the mirror, and you might be able to see a series of little spindly looking things along the top of the supports--those are some of the actuators i mentioned.
another picture of the same thing, 'cept this one didn't turn out and instead looks really cool. for the second roll of film in a row, yay for bad pictures that end up looking neat.
now we're back out on the platform, trying to get a shot of a couple ut's next to each other. i think one's behind me, one's barely in the corner (along with adam's head), and then of course there are those two. why did they build four, you may ask? well, partially a mine's-bigger-than-yours mentality (or...maybe that's why they're 8.4m across), but mostly for interferometry. when you've got more than one telescope, you can combine the light and do all sorts of useful things. the problem is, in the optical range, you have to physically combine the light (in radio it's easier to deal with, since the wavelengths are longer) to correleate the phase...and anyhow i'll stop blathering about interferometry, the cool point is that visible interferometry is the cutting edge of astronomy these days, and the vlt interferometer is the only one on the planet.
here's a little telescope...and by little i mean a meter across. yep, this dinky looking dome has a scope bigger than unc's morehead observatory. the reason i took this picture though is because it MOVES! it slides around on those tracks there, and they're building another 3 of these up there on the platform. why, you may ask? interferometry! an important part is getting different separations between your telescopes ("baselines"), and moveable telescopes let you do that easily.
so now we're inside, yes, actually inside the vlti. we're in tunnels under the platform the other pictures are taken from, looking at all the insane machinery that makes interferometry happen. hard to believe, actually, that it works, because there are so many mirrors it gets bounced off of, so many ways of introducing error. lunacy. optical interferometry is pure lunacy.
so here's clara in the jungle. in the atacama. this is the living/dining facilities for the vlt engineers. it's a biodome. mostly underground. science fiction-y enough for you yet? it seriously reminds me of dune. outside, it's painfully dry, nothing's alive, and they have to truck in things like water and supplies. but inside the wealthy dwelling (the cerro paranal facility is the most expensive science facility on the planet, being topped only by the international space station, which is, obviously, not on the planet), there's a lush green forest, a huge water cost, all sealed up. anyhow, i'll stop being a geek. a less dorky comparison would be to a moon base. so you can use that one if you want.
see if you can find tim in the jungle. and oh yes, i forgot to mention, there's a swimming pool. a nice one.
i'll close with a reminder of where we are. this is similar to but better than the picture i started off with...you can see the fog out over the ocean. apparently there are huge cliffs out there, but alas, we can't see them. the guy who showed us around says you can only see them about one day a month or so.