La Silla observatory in Chile. The two telescopes are the 1-metre Schmidt telescope (left) and the MPG-ESO 2.2-metre telescope (right). The Milk Way is visible in the sky. The nearby dwarf galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud can be seen above the MPG-ESO telescope. The bright strip of the Milky Way is prominent because, from Earth, we are looking towards the densely-packed galactic centre. The pink and green glow visible just above the horizon is known as airglow, and is caused by excited atoms in the Earth's upper atmosphere.