Stargazing

Our final little excursion from San Pedro was a trip to the check out the night sky. It sounded great in the lonely planet, and having read a bit about how the Atacama desert was the place to stargaze, due to the altitude, lack of precipitation and light polution I persuaded Clairy that we had to do it (she didn't really need that much persuading though!). The lady that we purchased the tickets from in San Pedro was as miserable as sin. We hoped that she was not an indication of things to come. Fortunately she wasn't.

We duly arrived to wait for the bus at 8.30 at night wrapped up to the max in every item of clothing we could fit on. Earlier in the day we had been up to the Geysers and had experienced just how cold the desert could be, so we weren't taking any chances. I even had a pair of my gurt cargo shorts on under my trousers in an effort to keep me warm. It was quite a large group, about 20 people in total, and I hoped that there would be a fair few telescopes to go around. The bus driver headed off and we shortly arrived at a small house with piles of equipment in the garden.

We had a quick chat in a darkened room inside about the basics of looking at the stars, and to get our night vision up before heading out. There was a whole set of different sized telescopes in the garden. One by one the lady went round and let us know what they were pointing at. The first one that we looked at had a spectacular view of the moon. We tried very hard to get our camera to be pointing in the right direction to get a pic. Clairy's was definitely better as she's got a much steadier hand than me.

Clairy's


Mine


And then a little while later one of the staff showed us another telescope that had been left without a filter so that pictures could be taken easily. Here is his rather more successful version.


I liked this set of binoculars on a counter-weighted stand.


This big beast (the telescope that is...ahoho) was looking at a nebula, with lots of different coloured stars in it. Clairy is on the step ladder to reach it.


I couldn't resist zooming in on Clair's quality face of concentration. She couldn't quite manage to shut one eye without some assistance.


This one was pointing at the moon.


We had a good look at Jupiter, and you could quite clearly see the bands across it. Saturn and its rings were also visible. One of the other telescopes was pointing at Alpha Centauri, and you could just about make out the fact that it is a binary star, actually made of two stars orbiting each other.

Here's my rubbush effort at getting a picture of some of the mass of visible stars with a long exposure (the max is only 15 secs on the camera). I can see one though!


Oh hi! And finally here is this spectacular pic of Clairy the stargazing fairy prancing around whilst looking in telescopes. Ideal.


After this we all got round in a circle and had a good half an hour chat with the French guy who had set it up. We both thought he spoke really well, and had some fascinating information to say about the night sky, what to look out for, and how to get started at identifying stuff in the sky. We both really loved it, but were happy when they said it was time for the complementary hot-choccy as we were bloody freezing by that point.