Observatory tours
The Milky Way.
Pilita de la Peña Pereda from Chile — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Menaqs — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Menaqs — CC BY-SA 3.0
A narrow green valley between dry desert mountains east of La Serena, cut by the Elqui River, its floor covered in orchards and fields under brown and pink slopes. It is famed for clear skies on more than three hundred nights a year, making it one of the world's best places to watch the stars. In and around the valley, tourist observatories run night tours with telescopes, where visitors see the Milky Way with astonishing clarity, the planets and Saturn's rings, and the Magellanic Clouds, galaxies visible only from the southern hemisphere. Major international research observatories crown the nearby mountains. The town of Vicuña is the valley's capital and birthplace of poet Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945, with a museum on her life. Small villages climb further up the valley with crafts and markets. Book an observatory tour ahead and pick a moonless night. Valley nights are cold even in summer, and the daytime sun is strong.
The Milky Way.
Mistral museum.
Between mountains.
East of La Serena; Vicuña town about an hour's drive
On a moonless night or with a thin crescent; skies are clear most of the year, and book the observatory tour ahead.