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Milky Way over La Silla observatory. View of the southern Milky Way over the telescopes of the La Silla observatory in the southern Atacama Desert, Chile. This site is operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). La Silla was ESO's first observing site and is still one of the leading observatories in the southern hemisphere. Here, the Milky Way can be seen from the Carina Nebula and the Southern Cross to the bright galactic central bulge in constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio. Mars, shining at its brightest during opposition with the Earth, appears next to bright star Spica (blue-white) in the constellation Virgo. (KEYSTONE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/BABAK TAFRESHI, TWAN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)