Majestic photographs of the world’s major telescopes

Photographer Julian Abrams’ new project ‘Everything Beautiful Is Far Away’ celebrates some of the world’s major telescopes and the impressive structures that house them

To Li Gege

Without them it is almost impossible to understand the universe. The telescope, whose majesty and complexity are captured in these images by photographer Julian Abrams, is one of astronomy’s most important instruments. They have opened our eyes to everything from the weather of distant planets to the workings of gravity.

The shot shown here is beautiful things are far away, a project done by Abrams in collaboration with astronomer Richard Ellis at University College London. It pays tribute to the world’s major telescopes and their impressive housing.

The main image shows the Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert. This is a complex of 4 instruments each over 8 meters.

Pictured above is the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales, Australia. Below shows the Cassegrain focus (effectively a lens) of the Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii.

A hexagonal mirror segment (needed to collect light to resolve distant objects) is shown prepared for one of the two Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea (pictured above). I’m here. A computer monitor of the Isaac Newton Telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in the Canary Islands, Spain. The oldest of the 20 telescopes at the site is pictured below.

These are structures that “do not look out of place in Tatooine’s harsh and dramatic fictional landscape,” writes Abrams in the accompanying book. “Standing as a hymn to human achievement…these stand-alone futuristic masterpieces exist solely to serve a scientific function.”