On a visit to Chile, I had the opportunity of visiting Paranal, a location in the Atacama desert to the north. Paranal is the site of the world’s largest optical telescope system operated by the European Southern Observatory. It has four telescopes, each with a mirror of an eight-metre diameter. So when they work together, they have a light collecting area of around 200 square metre, the size of a large urban flat. Indeed, astronomers have come a long way since four centuries ago Galileo first trained his pioneering telescope of some four-centimetre diameter on the sky.

After a two-hour drive from Antofagasta, through the rocks and sands of the desert, we could see the white domes of the telescopes on a high plateau. However, when the ESO transport set us down in front of the residency or the guest house for the observing astronomers and technicians I could not see any building in front. There was an upside-down dish-like structure covering the ground some 50 metre away and a paved path led to it. There, one encountered a gateway, crossing which, one was transported into something veritably out of science fiction.

For, you were greeted by a garden of lush green plants, a swimming pool, a large restaurant and recreation rooms. The residency is run like a comfortable hotel amid a man-made oasis in the large unfriendly desert outside. It has well-equipped guest rooms distributed over three floors. We had arrived in the middle of the day. Even so, most guest rooms carried the ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the doors. For, the users had been occupied with their observing all night and were making up for lost sleep now. At sunset they would be up and back at work at their telescopes and computers.

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