Phenomenal Sky

The Atacama desert provides one of the purest starry skies on Earth. The sky is so clear and dark that rare phenomena can actually be observed. For example, in this picture taken from Cerro Paranal Observatory (home to the Very Large Telescope), we clearly see two separate sources of natural light:

 

- The Zodiacal light: a white tilted cone of light which comes from the diffusion of sunlight by dust particles located in space (within the inner orbital plane of the solar system).

 

- The Airglow: an orange/red veil of light covering almost the whole sky. Airglow is a chemiluminescence process that results in the production of light after UV sunlight interacted with molecules/atoms of the upper layers of the atmosphere. The absorption of UV light by the atmosphere is only temporal and ends by remitting energy under the form of visible light.

 

This view was taken from Paranal Residencia located about 2 kilometers away from Cerro Paranal which you can spot in the middle of the image: a flat mount on top of which four tiny rectangular domes are installed: they are the four telescopes forming one of the most powerful astronomical infrastructure of the world: the Very Large Telescope or VLT.

 

TECHNICAL DETAILS

 

📷 Canon 6D + Sigma Art 14 mm + Standard Tripod

→ Single 20 seconds exposure

→ ISO 6400

→ 14 mm

→ f/1.8

Softwares: Dxo Optics pro 9 for noise reduction / Photoshop/Lightroom for all the edits.

Done