ESO VLT Laser Guide Star Facility

We report in this paper on the design and progress of the ESO Laser Guide Star Facility. The project will create a user facility embedded in UT4, to produce in the Earth's mesosphere laser guide stars, which extend the sky coverage of adaptive optics systems on the VLT UT4 telescope. Embedded into the project are provisions for multiple LGS to cope with second-generation MCAO instruments.