Whereas  ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) can observe very faint astronomical  objects in great detail, when astronomers want to understand how the  huge variety of galaxies come into being they must turn to a different  sort of telescope with a much bigger field of view. The VLT Survey  Telescope (VST) is such a telescope. It was designed to explore vast  swathes of the pristine Chilean night skies, offering astronomers  detailed astronomical surveys of the southern hemisphere.

  While  astronomers set out to investigate the delicate features of distant  galaxies millions of light-years from Earth, in the process they also  captured images of nearby stars hundreds of light-years away, and even  the faint trails of asteroids only light-minutes away in our own Solar  System. Even when studying the furthest reaches of the cosmos, the  sensitivity of ESO telescopes and dark Chilean skies can offer  entrancing observations much closer to home.

   Fig. A glittering host of galaxies populate this rich image taken with  ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope, a state-of-the-art 2.6-m telescope designed  for surveying the sky in visible light. The features of the multitude of  galaxies strewn across the image allow astronomers to uncover the most  delicate details of galactic structure.

See: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1827/