Late Afternoon at Taruntius
Amazingly Sharp VLT Image of Lunar Landscape Thirty-three years after the first manned landing on the Moon, the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) has obtained what may be the sharpest image of the lunar surface ever recorded from the ground. It was made with the NAOS-CONICA (NACO) adaptive optics camera mounted on the ESO VLT 8.2-m YEPUN telescope at the Paranal Observatory. The photo (ESO PR Photo 19a/02) shows an area about 700 km from the Apollo XI landing site. The location is in the Eastern hemisphere, just North of the lunar equator, and right between two of the major "seas", Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquillity) and Mare Foecunditatis (Sea of Fertility). The field-of-view measures a