Atacama
DesertSantiagoPACIFIC
OCEANCalamaLa SerenaValparaísoCopiapóAndes^
M
ountainsALMA
ObservatorySOUTH
AMERICALas Campanas
Observatory
La Silla
ObservatoryCerro Tololo
Inter-American
ObservatoryCerro Mayu
ObservatoryCerro Pachón
ObservatoryARGENTINACHILEObservatorio
Astronómico
Observatories on Andino
our itinerary30 ASTRONOMY • APRIL 2018
dinner around 8 p.m. (Eating late is common
in Chile.) We took three f lights and several
long car trips to reach not only the obser-
vatories, but also nearby towns and unique
landscapes unlike any I’d seen before.
We visited Cerro Tololo Inter-American
Observatory (CTIO), the Gemini South
Observatory, and the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).
We also stopped at Observatorio
Astronómico Andino (OAA) near Santiago
and Observatorio Cerro Mayu near La
Serena — two observatories that are part of
a growing astronomical tourism industry
catering to people who want to travel to
and within Chile to experience the spec-
tacular skies.
Just outside OAA’s rustic but high-tech
lodge, many of us got our first look at the
Southern Hemisphere night sky. Globular
cluster Omega Centauri and the Carina
Nebula were stunning through telescopes,
while Alpha and Beta Centauri, along with
nearby Crux the Southern Cross, stood out
brightly to the naked eye amid the rich
southern Milky Way. Some familiarconstellations remained — Scorpius, for
example — but appeared oddly misshapen,
backward and upside down from their
Northern Hemisphere apparitions.
“What I’ll always remember is the feel-
ing of seeing the Southern Hemisphere
stars and not knowing what the heck I was
looking at,” says ambassador Amy Jackson,
an educator from Austin, Texas, and
founder and director of Starry Sky Austin.
“For someone who knows the constellations
and sky so well, to look up and feel lost is
the most disorienting feeling. It really
helped me to understand how the students
and public I teach in my classes and pro-
grams must feel.”
The Observatorio Cerro Mayu marries
Chilean culture with the beautiful dark sky.
Cerro Mayu’s large outdoor sculptures
carry both astronomical and cultural sig-
nificance, highlighting Chileans’ deep rela-
tionship with their sky. Although we were
blown away at OAA the night before, the
weather was better and the sky even darker
at Cerro Mayu, prompting an evening of
excited astroimaging.1234ASTRONOMY:ROEN KELLY