In November 2025, four lasers pierced the sky above Cerro Paranal in Chile. Fired from each of the four large 8-meter telescopes at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), these beams created artificial stars used by the telescopes’ adaptive optics system to measure and correct for blurring caused by the Earth’s atmosphere. The spectacu- lar firing of these lasers marks a major milestone in the GRAVITY+ pro- ject, in which LIRA is heavily involved. This vast and complex upgrade of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) gives the instrument increased observational power and much greater coverage of the sky than before.
Credit : Anthony Berdeu/ESO
