Overlooking Los Angeles, six small domes nestle amid the pine trees atop Mount Wilson. Individually, the 1-metre telescopes inside those buildings have no chance of competing with the biggest ground and space telescopes. But collectively, the Mount Wilson telescopes are producing some of the sharpest images ever made. Spread in a Y-shaped array across the top of the mountain, the telescopes are part of the Centre for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA). The light from each one is funnelled through vacuum tubes to a central shed, where it is combined in a process called interferometry. Read more