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With more than 330 clear nights per year and one of the clearest sky on Earth, the Atacama desert is an astronomer’s paradise.
It is no surprise therefore that the major astronomical observatories are installed there. These observatories are large research facilities for professional astronomers and are not opened to the public at night.
There are few public observatories in Chile, the most recent and best equipped one being in San Pedro de Atacama. The tours last 2 hours and a half, transportation included. The observing site is 7km to the south of San Pedro, away from the lights. An important part of the tour is about the naked eye sky : The constellations, the rotation of the sky, how to orient yourself with the stars, etc... Then observations with telescopes takes you further away, from the planets, stars, star clusters, nebulate.
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