Chile And Telescopes Are A Match Made In Heaven

On July 2, the path of a total solar eclipse took it over the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Even though that observatory is designed to study the night sky, it nonetheless made an idea spot to watch the Moon's shadow sweep east across the nearby Pacific Ocean.

While in Chile to cover the eclipse, I decided to visit some of the many other observatories that have made their home in the Chilean mountains. I picked three. Here's a snapshot of what they do and what makes them so valuable to the worlds of astronomy and astrophysics.

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA)

The ALMA telescopes look like large steerable satellite dishes. The dishes aren't all packed together. Any two of them can be as much as 10 miles apart.

They're in a part of the Atacama Desert that's about 16,000 feet above sea level. The thin air there makes it hard for humans to work, so ALMA's main control room is at a lower altitude, a mere 9,500 feet above sea level.

"In the control room what we do is to operate the telescope the Alma Observatory" says ALMA astronomer Ignacio Toledo. Operating the telescope means deciding what the dishes are pointing at and monitoring atmospheric conditions, especially the amount of water vapor.