Get the latest tech news
Protecting the Darkness in Chile's Atacama Desert
Light pollution is threatening the future of astronomy. Can a new nationwide lighting standard make a difference?
The extraordinary darkness that sheaths the Atacama, which stretches for hundreds of miles in Chile’s north, has made it a haven for astronomers searching for planets and stars shimmering in the night sky. Others might become impossible without better technology: “We are directly cutting the possibility of seeing certain phenomena,” said Rodolfo Angeloni, an assistant scientist at NOIRLab’s Gemini Observatory Southern Operations Center who studies stellar astrophysics and the effects of light pollution on the Chilean sky. “Chile is showing us the way to how to do this in a sort of holistic fashion,” said Richard Green, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, who has studied dark skies for over 30 years and used to travel to the Atacama as part of his work at the U.S. National Observatory.
Or read this on Hacker News