Engineering rendering of the ESPRESSO instrument

This picture shows an engineering rendering of the main mechanical and optical components of the ESPRESSO instrument on ESO���s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. ESPRESSO will be an ultra-precise spectrograph that is capable of combining light from all four VLT Unit Telescopes to create a virtual 16-metre aperture telescope. The instrument is mounted inside a vacuum vessel that is in turn inside two thermal isolation enclosures to shield it from external disturbances. The extensions from the top of the instrument are parts of the instrument���s two cameras, one each for the red and blue parts of the spectrum.