It is located in Chile at the La Silla Observatory and was an early pioneer in the use of active optics.

[1] The main mirror of NTT is flexible and its shape is actively adjusted during observations by actuators to preserve the optimal image quality.

The telescope dome is relatively small, and is ventilated by a system of flaps that makes air flow smoothly across the mirror, reducing turbulence and leading to sharper images.

These include unravelling the mysterious Galactic centre,[6] contributing to the observations of the first solar-like oscillations in another star,[7] and breaking many distance records by finding new galaxies in the far-away Universe.

[10] NTT observations of stars orbiting the centre of our Milky Way helped determine the mass and the radius of its supermassive black hole, effectively helping to confirm the existence of such a massive and compact object.