After an overnight (reasonably comfortable) coach journey from La Serena, we had a driver collect us from the bus station to squire us around for the day. First stop: brunch with a view of the Antofagasta fishing port:
Next stop ‘La Portada‘ – the natural ‘monument’ just outside Antofagasta – a sea-arch:
Access to the beaches is no longer possible since the last earthquake.
Then it was time to head off to the big event of the day, a visit to the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal.
The telescopes, up on the ‘cerro’ or mountainOffices, construction, engineering etc, and a slightly weird cactus garden with gnomes etcUm…From Paranal you can see the full width of Chile – somewhere over there on the horizon is a snow-capped peak that is actually in Argentina!And in this direction you can look down at the sea.
Two of the four larger telescopes that make up the VLT.
The VLT uses interferometry to bring together the images from the various telescopes, giving them high resolution images of objects that are very far away.
One of the big telescopes next to one of the smaller ‘AT’ or Auxiliary Telescopes’ .Hard hats mandatory!The ATs can be moved around on rails to ‘tune’ the VLT.
Inside one of the large ‘unit’ telescopes, looking up at the mirror.
Please shut down Sun before switching off power!Gear mechanism for orienting the mirror of the telescope.Can’t believe they let me near this stuff…
Scale: The VLT Telescopes, the future E-ELT and for some reason the Sagrada Familia
The on-site staff quarters are rather cool, built into the mountainside with a dome roof that has to be blacked-out to avoid light pollution when the telescopes are in use:
Entrance to the staff quarters, and the dome roof built into the mountain.
Our adventures 