From: PopSci
[with thanks to SvperNova09 of MidsouthMakers for pointing it out on IRC]
There’s very little we can write to preface the imagery below, so we’ll just set the scene and get out of the way. The video below was captured by Stephane Guisard and Jose Francisco Salgado at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile’s Atacama Desert. And it might make you cry.
What makes this time lapse particularly amazing–because we’ve all seen plenty of time lapse videos of the night sky–is the four telescopes in the foreground. Watching these instruments work against a black background would be endlessly fascinating on its own. Unfortunately you won’t be able to pay them too much attention. Because damn, what a sky.