The Astronomy Tour

One of the more interesting things that I did in the Atacama region was to go on an Astronomy Tour. The Atacama Desert is a prime location for star gazing. The climate is dry, there are few clouds, it is relatively high altitude, and the high atmospheric winds are laminar and consistent - all good things for observing the heavens. There are many large scientific telescope installations in the area and the largest radio telescope in the world is currently being built up there (the Atacma Large Millimetre Array).

A French Astronomer and his wife live just outside San Pedro and they run nightly tours of the night sky. It was very educational - the guy was so passionate about astronomy and he certainly had a knack for explaining how we fit into the solar system, our galaxy and the universe. He used a laser pointer to identify different areas of the sky and he had about 6 different telescopes in the back yard of his house that he focused on different areas so that we could "ooh and aah" about the moon, the constellations, star clusters, nebulae and the like. For a couple of hours I was completely enthralled.

Below is my picture of the moon taken through on of his telescopes.