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I live in Chile and have been to places like 200km North of Santiago that are very serious about curbing light pollution. After all, Chile houses more telescop
by daniel-cussen 9y ago
I live in Chile and have been to places like 200km North of Santiago that are very serious about curbing light pollution. After all, Chile houses more telescopes than any other country and they are a serious industry here. I believe the reasons are that there are a lot of high-altitude places (air is thinner) where the air is also very dry, with a sparse population that doesn't produce much light (especially because of favorable regulation to promote this industry) and there's local knowhow because of all the other existing telescopes.
- dr_zoidberg 9y agoNot just the altitude, but the dry air. I think the Atacama desert is classfied as of the most (if not the most) dry places on earth. That helps a lot with having almost 100% "uptime" on the scopes, and with atmospheric seeing (the quality of the observations under an atmosphere).
- zimpenfish 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Desert#Aridity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Desert#Aridity says "driest non-polar region".