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| A Giant Telescope Grows in Chile | A Giant Telescope Grows in Chile |
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| LAS CAMPANAS OBSERVATORY, Chile — To walk among the observatory domes of the Atacama Desert is to brush your hair with the stars. | LAS CAMPANAS OBSERVATORY, Chile — To walk among the observatory domes of the Atacama Desert is to brush your hair with the stars. |
| The Atacama, on a plateau high in the Chilean Andes, is one of the driest and darkest places in the world. During the day one can see to Bolivia, far to the east, where clouds billow into thunderstorms that will never moisten this region. At night, calm, unruffled winds off the Pacific Ocean produce some of the most exquisite stargazing conditions on Earth. | The Atacama, on a plateau high in the Chilean Andes, is one of the driest and darkest places in the world. During the day one can see to Bolivia, far to the east, where clouds billow into thunderstorms that will never moisten this region. At night, calm, unruffled winds off the Pacific Ocean produce some of the most exquisite stargazing conditions on Earth. |
| One evening in late January the sky was so thick with stars that the bones of the constellations blurred into the background. The Milky Way, our home galaxy, was rolling straight overhead, and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, satellite galaxies of our own, floated alongside like ghosts. The Southern Cross, that icon of adventure and romance, loomed unmistakably above the southern horizon. | One evening in late January the sky was so thick with stars that the bones of the constellations blurred into the background. The Milky Way, our home galaxy, was rolling straight overhead, and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, satellite galaxies of our own, floated alongside like ghosts. The Southern Cross, that icon of adventure and romance, loomed unmistakably above the southern horizon. |
| In the last half-century, astronomers from around the world have flocked to Chile and its silky skies, and now many of the largest telescopes on Earth have taken root along a sort of observatory alley that runs north-south for some 800 miles along the edge of the Atacama. | In the last half-century, astronomers from around the world have flocked to Chile and its silky skies, and now many of the largest telescopes on Earth have taken root along a sort of observatory alley that runs north-south for some 800 miles along the edge of the Atacama. |
| The residents include the Very Large Telescope, composed of four telescopes, each more than eight meters (27 feet) in diameter, and built by an international collaboration called the European Southern Observatory. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, another eight-meter telescope, is set to start operating next year, mapping the entire sky every three days. | |
| (The ability of a telescope to harvest light from distant stars depends roughly on the area of its primary mirror. The Palomar Telescope in Southern California, an instrument that ruled astronomy into the 1990s, was five meters, or 200 inches, in diameter.) |