San Pedro de Atacama observatory, Chile

I spent in San Pedro de Atacama sadly less than 24h, so cannot tell you a lot about the town itself. One great thing I saw was a small observatory. Not sure exactly where it was as we got there when it was already dark. You are greeted with a small lecture on stars, then you go outside and you find yourself in a sort of a telescope field. Not the massive ones from “Contact”. No, just normal telescopes in different shapes and sizes.

Each one of them is pointed towards a different phenomenon, be it a planet, a star, a galaxy, a cluster etc. And at each stop you get explained what you are looking at. Very interesting and enlightening. I was also lucky because one gentleman who worked there saw I had a DSLR camera and showed me how to take pictures of the night sky. They also showed us a trick to use when you want to have the night sky and the people in the picture at the same time.

I wish we had few more hours to stay and play with that.

The excursion ended with hot chock and some story telling about the invention and improvement of telescopes. All in all, a great night.

Here are the specs I used for the picture, however that only works without light pollution, so sadly not in that many places.

Specs: 30'', F3,5, ISO 3200