{"id":488089,"date":"2026-06-21T06:59:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T06:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/488089\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T06:59:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T06:59:16","slug":"it-might-look-like-we-started-a-space-war-but-we-didnt-astronomers-fire-lasers-at-distant-cosmic-cloud-all-in-the-name-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/488089\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;It might look like we started a space war, but we didn\u2019t.&#8221; Astronomers fire lasers at distant cosmic cloud, all in the name of science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released a striking image showing powerful laser beams shooting into the night sky above Chile, as astronomers targeted the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skyatnightmagazine.com\/astrophotography\/nebulae\/tarantula-nebula\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tarantula Nebula<\/a> with one of the world\u2019s most advanced telescope systems.<\/p>\n<p>The image captures Paranal Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) using laser systems to create artificial guide stars high in Earth\u2019s atmosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It might look like we started a space war, but we didn\u2019t,&#8221; says ESO. &#8220;This isn\u2019t a scene from Star Wars either.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ESA-IZN-1.jpg\" alt=\"ESA's IZN-1 laser ranging station on top of the Iza\u00f1a mountain in Tenerife, Spain\" class=\"wp-image-170702\"\/>ESA&#8217;s IZN-1 laser ranging station on top of the Iza\u00f1a mountain in Tenerife, Spain<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/eso-lasers-tarantula-nebula.jpg\" alt=\"Beams from lasers installed on European Space Telescope's Very Large Telescope Interferometer, fired at the Tarantula Nebula. Credit: A. Berdeu\/ESO\" class=\"wp-image-189750\"\/>Beams from lasers installed on European Space Telescope&#8217;s Very Large Telescope Interferometer, fired at the Tarantula Nebula. Credit: A. Berdeu\/ESO<\/p>\n<p>The lasers are part of a major upgrade programme known as GRAVITY+, designed to improve the performance of the VLTI.<\/p>\n<p>An interferometer combines light collected by multiple telescopes to effectively create a virtual telescope with a \u2018mirror\u2019 as large as the distance between the individual instruments.<\/p>\n<p>This allows astronomers to study extremely fine cosmic details that would otherwise be impossible to resolve.<\/p>\n<p>However, our atmosphere distorts incoming starlight, blurring observations.<\/p>\n<p>To counter this effect, the VLTI fires lasers into the upper atmosphere where they excite sodium atoms around 90km (56 miles) above Earth, creating bright artificial stars.<\/p>\n<p>These allow the telescope\u2019s adaptive optics system to measure atmospheric turbulence and correct for it in real time.<\/p>\n<p>Laser guide stars were first suggested in the final report of the Very Large Telescope Project in 1986: &#8220;If it could work in practice, it would be a breakthrough.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now, 40 years later, that breakthrough is here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released a striking image showing powerful laser beams shooting into the night sky&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-488089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}