Check out this majestic image of Milky Way galaxy peeking above horizon

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) on Monday shared a majestic picture of our home galaxy - the Milky Way - peeking above the horizon. Taken at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert, the picture shows the observatory's telescopes bracketing the starry, dusty band as our home galaxy stretches across the sky.

To the right of the image, lies the domed enclosure of the ESO 3.6-metre telescope and its adjacent smaller sibling, the now-decommissioned Coudé Auxiliary Telescope. To the left is the receiver dish for the now-decommissioned Swedish ESO Submillimetre Telescope. And, nearly at the centre of the image, lie the other buildings and telescope enclosures hosted at La Silla.

That luminous glow, just to the left of centre which gently curves through the sky, is called the zodiacal light, and it's sunlight scattered by dust particles in the plane of the Solar System.

This Picture of the Week, taken at our #LaSilla Observatory, shows the Milky Way as it peeks above the horizon, with two of the observatory's telescopes bracketing the starry, dusty band as it stretches across the sky.🔗 https://t.co/gk3FIx2DWf Credit: @ESO / P. Horálek pic.twitter.com/5ljiAMhFwx

— ESO (@ESO) April 25, 2022

The La Silla Observatory has been an ESO stronghold since the 1960s. It has led to an enormous number of scientific discoveries, including several "firsts".

More information about the ESO image can be found here.