Yes, what you are looking at right now is real. This is a laser being shot up into space. I bet you are wondering that if you were in space right now, would you actually be able to see this laser, and the answer is, yes! Mindboggling isn't it. Well first off let me explain why this machine is shooting a laser beam into space.
This space machine is at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) site (yeah I know, what a creative name)located in Chile and what astronomers there are trying to do is they are trying to find and measure the distortions found in Earth's atmosphere.
What does that mean?
Well, you see, Earth has an atmosphere, although relatively thin, which contains particles such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, water vapor and even dust. In the atmosphere there are also these things called air pockets and no they are not really pockets of air in the sky. What they really are, are strong currents of air blowing in a certain direction. This is why sometimes a plane ride can be a little or very bumpy. Because of this wind, it causes the atmosphere to change and shifts which results in distorting images from space. This is how some stars seem to twinkle. Although it seems dreamy and pretty, this hinders us from seeing where the star really is.
To fix this problem, astronomers are able to send a laser beam up into space which acts as an artificial star which they are able to measure the blurring on. With this information the telescope is able to minimize the blurring. This laser is just an emission of excited atoms and molecules powerful enough reach past Earth's atmosphere.
In this situation, these astronomers are trying to examine the stars in the center of the galaxy, and so to be as precise as they can, they want to measure the atmospheric blurring in this particular area. As for the aliens on a planet in the center of the galaxy, they would be able to see the laser, however, the laser's light would mix with the Sun's light and all they would see is one distant star.
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