Mamalluca Observatory La Serena

After almost five weeks in Argentina we decided it was time to move on to Chile. We took the bus from Mendoza to Santiago, an amazing journey that takes you through the mountains right past Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in the Americas, at 22841 feet. Once on the Chilean side we saw a dramatic change in vegetation type. We traveled from the …

White rabbits everyone! If you don't know, if you say white rabbits as your first words on the first of the month its meant to mean good luck for the test of it! I as usual forgot this and to be honest only realized it had hit October tomorrow (I'm typing this on the 2nd on word, sat on a 15 hour coach ride by the way! confusing i realise!). < …

... for 6 as we had been told to do only to find out we didn't really need to go back until 6.30. When we got to the Mamalluca observatory and met our tour guide he was surprised we were there so early as we wouldn't be able to see anything for an hour or ...

... a quick dinner at La Pino. Though it was a limited menu, we were happy to enjoy a meal before our evening excursion to the Mamalluca Observatory. We made it back in time to wait half an hour for the bus for our tour. As with everything in South America, ...

... town by the coast with a nice main square and nice beaches. The best thing we did however was visit Mamalluca observatory in nearby Vicuna. Northern Chile is regarded as the best place in the world for study space because they have over 300 clear nights ...

... more booze in a pisco distillery in the nearby Elqui Valley, but for us the highlight was a night time trip to Cerro Mamalluca Observatory, set beneath some of the clearest skies in the world. Though not a research observatory, for the curious stargazer ...

... was in readiness for the long night ahead at a place that we'd been looking forward to the most whilst in La Serena. A trip to the Mamalluca observatory in nearby Vicuna in the Elqui Valley.          The Elqui Valley is famous ...

... good scallop empanada for lunch at the beach though. The second night we signed up for a tour of the Mamalluca Observatory about an hour outside of La Serena. There is a large number of observatories in Chile due to the fact that there is not a lot of ...

... and a lovely beach.  This part of Chile is one of the best places in the world to stargaze so we went to Mamalluca observatory and got to see the moon up really close through a powerful telescope as well as the stars that make up Orion's Belt, ...

... burning time before the observatory. It turns out we did not go to the sister observatory of Ktit Peak, but we went to the Mamalluca Observatory instead, which I’m sure is equally neat. The tour started at 8pm once the sky was dark, and we were up ...

... future. The really big research telescopes are not open to the public so my tour was to the smaller Cerro Mamalluca Observatory. Here an extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastic Chilean astronomer pointed out constellations, clusters and nebulae. He let ...

... more markets (yet its exactly the same stuff at each one!!) that night we went up toVicuna an hours drive away from La Serana to the Mamalluca Observatory. Northern Chile is one of the best places on earth to star gaze as it has only 7 days of cloud on ...