An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

An → ESO observatory, located on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert, northern Chile, at 2,635 m altitude. It is about 120 km south of the town of Antofagasta and 12 km inland from the Pacific Coast. The Paranal Observatory hosts the
→ Very Large Telescope (VLT) with four 8.2 m telescopes. Each telescope provides one → Cassegrain and two → Nasmyth focus stations for facility instruments. One Nasmyth focus is available for visitor instruments. In addition each telescope is equipped with a → coudé focus station from which the light can be coherently combined in the interferometric focus. ESO also operates four 1.8 m Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs), that are used as an
interferometric array (VISA) and a 4 m infrared survey telescope (VISTA).
Currently, more than 10 instruments including two
interferometric instruments (MIDI, AMBER) are operational and offered for science observations.

See also: Paranal, the name of the mountain, in the Quechua language meaning “whirlwind;” → observatory.