Paranal Observatory

The Atacama is the driest desert on earth, with almost no cloud, negligible humidity and very little light pollution, which is why the world's astronomers built here, and Cerro Paranal carries the flagship: the Very Large Telescope, four eight-metre instruments that can be combined to work as one, along with survey telescopes on the neighbouring ridge. The site is otherworldly, a flattened mountaintop of white domes above an ochre desert that runs to the Pacific, with a half-buried residence building housing the staff. Free tours run at weekends, booked long in advance, and take visitors into a telescope dome and the control room; they run in daylight, so you see the machinery rather than observing. The wider region also hosts ALMA's radio antennas on a plateau at five thousand metres, which offers its own weekend visits.

History

Before the observatory, the summit of Cerro Paranal was a survey control point at 2,664 metres; it was levelled for the telescopes and now stands at 2,635 metres. The first of the four 8.2-metre unit telescopes of the Very Large Telescope began work in May 1998 and was opened to astronomers on 1 April 1999, the other three followed in 1999 and 2000, and four movable 1.8-metre auxiliary telescopes were added between 2004 and 2007. The four big telescopes are named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun, words for astronomical objects in the Mapuche language. Work done here includes the first direct image of a planet outside the solar system and the tracking of stars around the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way (Wikipedia, Very Large Telescope; Wikipedia, Cerro Paranal).

What's there

• A telescope dome - standing beneath one of the eight-metre instruments.
• The control room - where the night's observing is actually run.
• The desert setting - the mountaintop platform above the driest desert on earth.
• The residencia - the half-buried living quarters built into the hillside.

When to go

Tours run at weekends year-round and must be booked online months ahead, as places are limited and go quickly. Visits are during the day. If your interest is actually seeing stars, book a night at one of the tourist observatories around San Pedro de Atacama or the Elqui valley instead.

What to expect

This is a working scientific facility, not an attraction: tours are daytime only, so you will not look through a telescope, and the visit is about engineering and science rather than stargazing. You must arrange your own transport, as no public transport reaches it, and the drive across the desert is long. Bookings open on a schedule and fill within days.

Nearby

Antofagasta is two hours north; San Pedro de Atacama and its tourist observatories lie further inland.

Key facts