Four super-powerful lasers have lit up the sky in Chile - creating artificial guide stars to help with space exploration.
The most powerful laser guide star system in the world has been switched on at the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope.
The 22-watt beams are fired towards the sky, making sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere glow so that they look like real stars. Each of the laser beams is about 30cm-wide.
The creation of the artificial stars allows the telescope to compensate for the blurring caused by the Earth's atmosphere, helping to create sharper images.
Using lasers is preferable to relying on natural starlight, because the laser beams do not move around in the way that astronomical sources do.
By using more than one laser, image quality can be improved over a larger field of view.
Images show the glowing orange laser beams cut through the sky above the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
The system was unveiled on Tuesday, and means the ESO's Paranal Observatory now has the most advanced telescope system on Earth.
Researchers say the system paves the way for the next-generation Extremely Large Telescope, due to be completed in 2024.
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