INDUSTRIAL PROJECT THREATENS DARK CHILEAN SKIES
BY: JAN HATTENBACH JANUARY 14, 2025
An industrial megaproject in Chile is threatening the pristine darkness over Paranal, one of the world’s most important observatories.
When a study in 2023 crowned Cerro Paranal the darkest observatory site in the world, astronomers must have felt reassured to have chosen the right spot. The 2,635-meter (8,645-foot) mountain in Chile’s Atacama Desert is home to the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope, one of the most advanced and prolific astronomical facilities.
But now, if a company named AES Andes (a subsidiary of the U.S. power company AES Corporation) gets its way, Paranal’s observational prowess might soon be history: Light pollution emitted by a proposed industrial “megaproject” could do away with the dark skies over this observatory.
“Paranal’s privileged position will disappear,” fears ESO’s director general Xavier Barcons. “We will become a sort of ‘average’ astronomical observatory. This is why we’re worried.”
The bad news comes at a time when ESO is building its “next big thing”: the Extremely Large Telescope, or ELT, just 22 kilometers (13 miles) to the east of Paranal, on another mountain called Cerro Armazones. When completed at the end of the decade, the ELT will be the world’s biggest optical observatory.
Also, just to the south of Paranal, an international consortium of 25 countries, including the U.S., Australia, Japan, and most of Europe, is planning to operate the southern site of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). This observatory would detect high-energy gamma rays by the visible light they generate when they interact with our atmosphere. The telescope would work together with its northern counterpart on the Spanish island on La Palma.
More:
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/will-chilean-observatory-lose-its-dark-skies/
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