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Several billion miles from Earth, Neptune's looking particularly sharp in a set of new images captured by one of the most powerful telescopes in the world.  。

Located in Chile, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) used what's known as laser tomography to capture test images of the planet and surrounding star clusters. 。

The telescope's Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument works with what's called the GALACSI adaptive optics module.This allows the telescope to correct for turbulence at different altitudes in the atmosphere, resulting in some incredibly clear, sharp images captured from Earth. 。

MUSE is the first instrument to benefit from two adaptive optics modes: wide field and narrow. The narrow field mode is what's generating these incredibly sharp images of Neptune — it corrects almost
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The image on the right is without the adaptive optics system in operation and the one on the left after the adaptive optics are switched on.Credit: ESO/P. Weilbacher (AIP) 。

The image on the right is a comparable image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Note that the two images were not taken at the same time so do not show identical surface features.Credit: ESO/P. Weilbacher (AIP)/NASA, ES。

The image on the left is from MUSE in Wide Field Mode, without the adaptive optics system in operation and the centre panel is an enlargement of a small part of this view. The image on the right is the view from the Narrow-Field Mode of MUSE when adaptive optics are switched on.Credit: ESO/S. Kammann (LJMU) 。

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