Into the Vortex!

Moonlight illuminates the top-most plateau of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), near La Serena, Chile—and with it, the Blanco 4-meter telescope dome (middle) that houses the Dark Energy Camera (DECam). Directly above the dome, we see Earth’s south pole, about which the world turns and our celestial sphere rotates, giving us this vortex of starlight.  Peering out of our little blue dot, our little snow globe, we also look into the depths of space and into our universe’s past.

Written by: Det. B. Nord [FNAL]
Image by: R. Hahn [FNAL]