AT A GLANCE

Why go?

High on a windswept ridge at the southern fringe of Chile's Atacama Desert, Las Campanas Observatory is one of the world's great temples of stargazing—and one of the most consequential research sites in modern astronomy. Established in 1969 by the Carnegie Institution for Science, it gave northern astronomers, for the first time, a permanent base from which to study the galactic centre, the Magellanic Clouds and the inky southern night. Today its twin 6.5-meter Magellan telescopes peer deep into the cosmos, and the mountaintop is being prepared for the colossal Giant Magellan Telescope of the future.↗↗↗

For a visitor, the appeal is equal parts science and landscape. This is an active research facility, not a museum, so daytime tours take you close to working instruments whose dishes and domes crown a stark, airless-looking plateau nearly 2,400 meters above sea level. The setting—among the driest, darkest skies on Earth—makes the place feel otherworldly even before you hear the stories of supernovae and the expanding universe behind the telescopes.↗↗