Having left Mendoza, we've now arrived in La Serena, Chile, by the sea. It feels good to be by the coast and to see the ocean spread out before us. The main reason we are here is to go star spotting. Yes, this is the place that magazines like Hello! and OK!! come to capture the lives of the Hollywood film stars on camera.....oh.. Ad has just told me it's not that sort of star spotting. Apparently it's the stars that come out in the night sky that we are going to see. Doh!
An hour or so away from the town are a number of observatories. This area is world renowned for its clear skies and consequently practically every night the huge telescopes are pointed upwards collecting god knows what sort of data. Most of these are not open to the public, but one, run by volunteers, opens its lenses to the paying public each night and gives a detail tour of the night sky. We book our places for this evening and go to wander the town.
The beach, although a good long walk away from where we are staying, is lovely, with at least a couple of miles of sand stretching round an enormous curve. Whilst the sea looks a bit rough, and a dipped, chilled toe convinces us that we aint going in, we spend a couple of hours soaking up some rays. The town itself is rather pretty in parts, with lots of colonial style buildings, which we haven't seen for absolutely ages, (not sure why but both Chile and Argentina, outside of the capitals have a distinct lack of colonial buildings) and great cafes.
As the day passes by our eyes are on the sky. Can you bleeding believe it! By 6 0'clock its cloudy as far as the eye can see, not only that they are big dark threatening type clouds. Just our luck! Never mind there's still a few hours to go before we set off on the tour.
Half past nine the mini bus comes to pick us up, but the weather hasn't cleared. We are both thinking that this is going to be a waste of time. However as we leave La Serena and head into the surrounding countryside the skies begin to clear. Once at the observatory, whilst not perfect ( it also turns out that the moon whilst not full, is giving off alot of light pollution) the stars are out in force. We spend about 3 hours being given a lecture on the milky way, galaxies, stars, suns, and constellations. We get to look through a couple of telescopes and the guide through his own enthusiam makes it a great trip. To be honest the stars were not as fantastic as we saw when in Cotopaxi, Ecuador, but the explanations and information given to us is brilliant. For instance did you know that two characters from the Harry Potter books are named after stars...Bellatrix and Sirrius Black. See fascinating innit. And I can now point out Orion and show you the belt, sword, feet, shoulders and head...I is turning into a regular Patrick Moore!!
We have a couple of days in La Serena where we just laze around, eating going to the beach and trying to decide what to do next.. but after two days it feels like its time to move on....
An hour or so away from the town are a number of observatories. This area is world renowned for its clear skies and consequently practically every night the huge telescopes are pointed upwards collecting god knows what sort of data. Most of these are not open to the public, but one, run by volunteers, opens its lenses to the paying public each night and gives a detail tour of the night sky. We book our places for this evening and go to wander the town.
The beach, although a good long walk away from where we are staying, is lovely, with at least a couple of miles of sand stretching round an enormous curve. Whilst the sea looks a bit rough, and a dipped, chilled toe convinces us that we aint going in, we spend a couple of hours soaking up some rays. The town itself is rather pretty in parts, with lots of colonial style buildings, which we haven't seen for absolutely ages, (not sure why but both Chile and Argentina, outside of the capitals have a distinct lack of colonial buildings) and great cafes.
As the day passes by our eyes are on the sky. Can you bleeding believe it! By 6 0'clock its cloudy as far as the eye can see, not only that they are big dark threatening type clouds. Just our luck! Never mind there's still a few hours to go before we set off on the tour.
Half past nine the mini bus comes to pick us up, but the weather hasn't cleared. We are both thinking that this is going to be a waste of time. However as we leave La Serena and head into the surrounding countryside the skies begin to clear. Once at the observatory, whilst not perfect ( it also turns out that the moon whilst not full, is giving off alot of light pollution) the stars are out in force. We spend about 3 hours being given a lecture on the milky way, galaxies, stars, suns, and constellations. We get to look through a couple of telescopes and the guide through his own enthusiam makes it a great trip. To be honest the stars were not as fantastic as we saw when in Cotopaxi, Ecuador, but the explanations and information given to us is brilliant. For instance did you know that two characters from the Harry Potter books are named after stars...Bellatrix and Sirrius Black. See fascinating innit. And I can now point out Orion and show you the belt, sword, feet, shoulders and head...I is turning into a regular Patrick Moore!!We have a couple of days in La Serena where we just laze around, eating going to the beach and trying to decide what to do next.. but after two days it feels like its time to move on....
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