Lasers on the ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer beam into the sky towards the Tarantula Nebula to create "artificial stars" that help astronomers measure and account for atmospheric turbulence. (Image credit: A. Berdeu/ESO) Looking like a scene out of a "Star Wars" title crawl, this photograph from the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) atop Cerro Paranal in Chile's Atacama Desert showcases some advanced techniques astronomers use to look out into the cosmos. What is it? This image shows the ESO's VLTI beaming four separate lasers into the sky towards the Tarantula Nebula. "It might look like we started a space war, but we didn't," the ESO wrote in a statement accompanying the image. Far from waging galactic warfare, astronomers use these lasers to create " artificial stars " in order to measure atmospheric turbulence.…