Space

We offer a general star tours each clear night, apart from a possible small period around the full moon. They allow people without any prior knowledge of the sky to understand how to look at it, and observe as well through powerful telescopes, and discover a new world, our universe ! And maybe from one of the best place on Earth to see the sky, the Atacama desert.

Our agency is located on Caracoles street 166 (Caracoles is San Pedro's main street). It is opened from 11h30 to 15h30, then from 18h00 to 21h00. Except on sundays when we open 16h00 to the time of the first tour.

We give these tours either in english, in french or in spanish. While the most frequent, it is not guaranteed we have an english speaking tour every night.

We try during the first part of the tour to explain the naked eye sky. What do we see when we look at the stars, what is a constellation, how to learn them, how to read a sky map and recognize the main stars. We use a green laser pointer to show you unambiguously the various constellations.

When the moon is visible, it is possible to take images of it through the telescopes, either with digital cameras, or with reflex (we have adapters for Nikon, Canon, Minolta and Pentax cameras).

While you can find a lot of astronomical photographs on the web, there is nothing like the experience of visual observing. Everybody has seen images of Saturn, but the first time you really see the planet with your own eyes becomes a moment to remember.

We have the largest park of telescopes of any public observatory in south America (between 20 and 60cm diameter), correctly aligned to always provide the best possible view, in order to let you discover some of the incredible views the sky has to offer. These telescopes are correctly maintained, and we use only high quality eyepieces to provide clear, sharp wide angle views. The 60cm telescope is for now the largest touristic telescope in Chile, but this record will not hold, since we are currently building two larger telescopes, which should enter operation near the end of 2009. Large diameters give much better views of the sky. What is hard to see in a 30cm telescope becomes quite visible, some stars show very vivid colors, and some nebulae start to be visible in color (normally, at night, we see in black and white). To provide the best possible views, we only use Televue Nagler, Panoptic or Ethos eyepieces. If it does not tell you much, we have spent more money on good quality eyepieces than some other observatories on telescopes.

Our tours are ending around a warm drink to talk a little bit before returning to San Pedro. The tours last two hours and a half. The schedule vary during the year (later during the summer, i.e. january and february).

To plan your visit, don't forget to visit our travel tip pages, or contact us directly.

The price is 12000 pesos per person, and includes the transport from and to San Pedro, the tour and a warm drink. We are in the desert and the nights are cold. It is very important to be warmly dressed in order to enjoy the tour without getting cold. We reimburse the tour in those rare fully covered nights. In order to offer a quality tour, the number of guests is limited to 24 per tour.

We accept little children as long as they are not a problem for the rest of the group (noise, cries). Families with small children can ask us for a minitour, at the beginning of the night.

The tour is given in english or in french or in spanish, so english speaking tours are not every night, please see with us in order to see when is the next english speaking tour. We are frequently completely booked up, so it is important to make your reservation as soon as possible.

We have quite often tours reserved by travel agencies. Every arrangement is possible.We have organized tours at sunset, with the organizers arranging for a barbecue for the guests followed by a star observation. Private tours are also available for a smaller number of persons. We also often arrange longer tours for groups of amateur astronomers. The easiest way is to contact us and see what is possible.