The southern stars
Trip Start
Dec 30, 2007
1
23
50
Trip End
Jun 22, 2008
Vicuna,
Chile
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Disappointed by our penguin encounter, we were not inclined to try other trips, but there was one activity we did want to sample. Chile is one of the best places in the world for watching stars - a combination of the driest desert on earth, clear skies and altitude plus low population densities (therefore little light pollution) have made it home to some of the flashest observatories around. You can't exactly use their equipment, but there is a custom made tourist observatory called Mamalluca. Tours go from La Serena but it is very simple, and quite a bit cheaper, to do it yourself.
The bus trip up the Elqui Valley to Vicuņa is interesting. This part of Chile is basically desert but the Valley is fertile and produces papaya and grapes which are mostly turned into pisco. I couldn't figure out where all that fertility comes from. The hills are bare and dusty, and the stream that runs through the valley looks insufficient to support a fraction of the production. But perhaps there is more water around than one would think, as the hydro dam just out of Vicuņa is a fair sized body of water.
The town itself is small enough, and must be thrilled to have the observatory so close. It shows rare entrepreneurial interest for South America.
Pisco, pisco everywhere
Having arrived with plenty of time up our sleeves we opted for the free tour of the Capel pisco factory, a gentle 20 minute stroll from town. The tour wasn't actually free, but it was interesting and the samples at the end were fair. I was interested to learn that the grape is turned into a low grade wine, then distilled to about 80 percent alcohol, then watered down to comply with Chile's liquor laws, then left to stew in great vats made of local roble (I think, some local tree anyway) or American oak which hold 42,000 litres. Capel produces 40 million bottles of pisco (including pre-mixed cocktails like the delicious pisco sour) of which 97 percent is consumed in Chile. I'm sure that there is a big export market for this stuff waiting to develop.
We asked if pisco was produced elsewhere in Chile. We were told no, but it seems that the real answer is yes, but outside Chile's second and third regions Chilean law prohibits it being called pisco. A stupid rule (as all these trademark rules are), particularly given that Peru produces the same stuff (with a stronger claim to originality) and there is no great knack to the production - the raw product is simply distilled alcohol and apparently flavourless.
Stars
At 10.30 we hopped in the minibus to take us to the observatory, where we got to look through telescopes bringing the stars 100 and 200 times closer, and had a 'star formation for dummies' lecture. It was a very good outing.
I was most impressed by the very first thing we did, perhaps because it involved one of the few constellations I recognise. Orion's sword has a very dim middle star. Magnified 100 times this 'star' is revealed to be a nebula containing four (in reality five, but you can't see that) little stars at its heart and at least another three in a line uncannily resembling Orion's belt.
Even observation with the naked eye was fascinating. I have never before seen that the Milky Way (via lactea in Spanish) is not just a bundle of stars in the vicinity of the southern cross, but extends in a band from one horizon to the other. A patch of lightness so dim it looked like a cloud turns out to be the Magellan nebula - a whole galaxy (there is another one but it was drowned by light pollution). You may have noticed that the bottom right corner of the southern cross is particularly black. This is because there is a carbon cloud (an absorption nebula called the coal sack) blocking the stars behind.
After amusing ourselves briefly picking out some traditional constellations (Orion, a bit of Cancer) our excellent guide taught us some others. It had never occurred to me that blank patches of sky can be constellations too but the coal sack formed the head of a black serpent for the Incas and they have a lovely couple of other black constellations too - the llama and the herder. Interestingly, where the Incas saw the head of a serpent, the Mapuche saw the body of a ņandu (an emu-like bird) and (apparently) aborigines saw an emu. I would not be surprised if the Maori saw a moa (and if anyone knows, drop me a note).
After a quick lecture on the life history of stars we were back outside again to look at an open cluster (lots of stars without organisation), and then a globular cluster (Omega Centauri I think) where the stars are packed like a ball. we had a quick look at Mars, which looked surprisingly golden.
Then we went inside to the flash 200 times telescope to look at Saturn and an open cluster known as the Jewel Box because of three coloured stars that line up - amber, blue (very faint) and green. Saturn looked like a kid's sticker or any black and white illustration you have ever seen - the band of rings were very clear looping around the planet at an angle of perhaps 30 degrees.
All up it was a very good trip, setting us up well for our last stop in Chile - San Pedro de Atacama.
