Stargaze beneath the endless velvet sky of the Atacama Desert with this travel guide.

A vast, sun-baked plateau in northern Chile, the Atacama stretches for nearly 1,000 miles along the Pacific, tucked between the ocean and the towering Andes. It’s the driest non-polar desert on Earth — and one of the most otherworldly. Underfoot, the world is mostly stone and salt flats, scattered lagoons, windswept dunes and ancient volcanic rock that seem to creep back toward the mountains.

Yet for all its severity, Atacama is overflowing with quiet magic. Geysers puff steam at dawn, mirror-like lakes host flamingos in delicate clusters and valleys unfurl in colors you don’t often see outside of a painter’s palette. When night falls, the sky steals the show: an impossible, diamond-bright canopy that blankets the desert and makes you feel like an accidental guest at the universe’s most intimate observatory.

Arriving in Chile felt like stepping into a dream stitched from mountains, desert and ocean. Over two weeks — eight flights, endless buses and taxis, and even a ferry ride — we threaded our way through the country’s central, northern and southern extremes, discovering how wildly different each region can be.

Santiago welcomed us first: a city of fine Chilean wine, inventive food and an art scene that sneaks up on you in galleries, street murals and cozy cafés. From there, we headed north to San Pedro de Atacama, the world’s driest place, where the landscape seemed to have been painted with otherworldly colors. Day tours whisked us from the flaming pink and blue of the Altiplanic lagoons and the eerie salt flats of Chaxa to the rust-red rocks of Piedras Rojas. At dawn, the Andes put on a steam-and-sunrise show at El Tatio Geysers. By night, Valle de la Luna felt lunar indeed — a place where you can almost moonwalk across the dunes before the desert sky opens up for stargazing that makes the Milky Way feel within reach.

Then, we pointed south, flying toward Patagonia’s wild edge. Punta Arenas served as our gateway to Torres del Paine, where glaciers groan, waterfalls tumble with ferocious grace and icebergs drift like slow sculptures in frigid waters. The vastness here recalibrates you — each vista a reminder of how small and lucky we are to witness it.

Our final stop was Castro on Chiloé Island, a place wrapped in sea mist and folklore. Colorful palafitos (stilt houses), wooden churches and island myths made for a gentle, storybook ending to a trip that never stopped surprising me. Chile is a country of sharp contrasts — and every contrast felt like an invitation to come back and explore more.

Gaze at a Million Stars in Atacama’s Heart

Arrive & Get Started / Begin your celestial journey

Admire / Discover what lies in Atacama’s night sky

Glimpse / Peer through giant telescopes & touch the stars

Snap a Photo / Pose with the stars, sip hot chocolate

Gaze at a Million Stars in Atacama’s Heart

Begin Your Celestial Journey

Bouncing between two local agencies in San Pedro de Atacama — Turismo Gato Andino and Horizons Turismo — we ended up booking a handful of excursions but the one that intrigued me most was the evening stargazing tour, about $40 USD. After the sun slipped behind the salt flats, a small group shuffled out into the desert for an after-hours date with the sky.

The guide begins with a warm, simple introduction to reading the heavens with the naked eye: constellations to look for, how the Milky Way pours across the horizon here and little stories that make the stars feel like old friends. Then, guests move to several powerful telescopes set against the black, clean sky. One by one, you lean in and are transported — lunar craters like sculpted bowls, Jupiter’s bands and moons, distant nebulae glowing faint and otherworldly.

End the night gathered under the vault of stars, steaming cups in hand, sipping a hot drink that tasted better than it should in the desert cold. Before dispersing, the host takes a photograph of each guest with that impossible starry backdrop — a simple memento of an evening that feels quietly enchanted.

Tip / Desert nights turn surprisingly crisp — tuck yourself into cozy layers and don’t forget plenty of water to sip under the stars.

We piled into the van at 9 p.m. and wound our way out of town, excitement ticking like a second heartbeat. Our little group spilled into the cool night and followed Margarita, our guide, down a narrow path into the wild. In minutes, she led us to her observatory — a humble patch of land where she lived, worked and shared the sky.

A semicircle of benches faced two gleaming telescopes, one small and friendly, the other a hulking portal to the cosmos. As we settled in, Margarita asked with a smile, “Why stargaze in Chile?” Then she pointed up.

Chile feels made for stargazing. Its skies are famously dark and clear: high altitudes, a dry atmosphere and very little light pollution combine to make the heavens startlingly visible. A spine of mountains more than 2,000 miles long carves through the country, leaving vast stretches of wilderness that protect those fragile night skies.

Some of the best places to look up are the Atacama Desert, the Elqui Valley and private spots like the Pangue Observatory. The Atacama, in northern Chile, is one of the driest places on Earth — its thin air and near-constant cloudlessness mean stars appear sharp and close. With almost 300 clear nights a year, the desert hosts some of the world’s most advanced observatories: Paranal, Las Campanas, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and even the cultural Observatorio Etno-Astronómico. Standing there with Margarita, under that vast, glittering vault, it was easy to understand why astronomers and dreamers alike find Chile irresistible.

Paranal Observatory perches on Cerro Paranal at 8,645 feet, home to the European Southern Observatory’s flagship optical–infrared facilities and the largest observatory of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. The site’s sleek telescopes and wind-sculpted concrete structures look as if they were designed by the sky itself — perfect for anyone who loves the science and the poetry of stargazing.

A short drive away, Las Campanas Observatory — born from the Carnegie Institution for Science in 1969 — boasts famously clear, steady dark skies that feel almost curated for viewing. Nearby, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, a compact 20-foot instrument that operated from 2007 to 2022, spent years listening to the whisper of the early universe in the cosmic microwave background, a quiet reminder that even small telescopes can make big discoveries.

For a hands-on night under the heavens, Observatorio Etno-Astronómico invites visitors to inspect planets, asteroids and distant galaxies through welcoming lenses and patient instructors. Gemini Observatory raises the bar with a 27-foot telescope and ALMA — an impressive array of radio dishes — opens an entirely different window on the cosmos, revealing cold gas and dust that optical telescopes can’t see. Many of these facilities welcome the public with tours, talks and nighttime viewings — plan ahead and check their visitor programs.

If you’re craving a dramatic natural stage, head two hours south of San Pedro de Atacama to Piedras Rojas. At 13,000 feet, the shallow salt flats sit framed by red-rock ridges and jagged mountain peaks that slice into the night. The landscape glows faintly in starlight, turning every constellation into something cinematic.

Margarita reminded us of a delightful truth: being in the Southern Hemisphere changes everything. The southern sky is richer with constellations and often seems brighter to the eye. Up north, we peer toward the Milky Way’s quieter outskirts; down here, we’re gazing straight into the galaxy’s luminous heart. The result is a sweep of stars so dense and brilliant it feels like the universe has decided to show off — perfect for anyone who wants to fall in love with the night.

Under the vast Atacama sky, familiar constellations drift into view — but not all of them. Being on the other side of the planet means some star patterns look the same as back home, while others are entirely new to your eye. Here, you can marvel at southern wonders: the graceful Southern Cross, the sweeping sails of Vela, the glittering Jewel Box cluster, the sprawling Omega Centauri and the dramatic Eta Carinae Nebula. Each one feels like a private performance in a celestial theater, made more magical by the desert’s crystal-clear, unpolluted nights.

Discover What Lies in Atacama's Night Sky

Margarita reached into her bag and produced a laser pointer so bright it seemed to tug the sky into focus. With the tip of light she traced invisible patterns across the dome of stars and, steady and sure, began to tell their stories.

She led us through constellations you don’t often see in the north: the Southern Cross, Vela with its “ship’s sails,” the glittering Jewel Box nestled within the Cross and the vast swaths of the Milky Way. She pointed out Velorum, a brilliant supergiant in Vela and then angled the beam toward Omega Centauri — a dense, jewel-like cluster sitting just beside the Jewel Box, second only to one other in brightness. Through her words it felt as if we were peering into a living map of the southern sky.

Margarita described the Jewel Box as a star cluster that looks like someone spilled a handful of colored gems across the heavens: blazing blues, deep reds — massive supergiants that shine with a weight and scale you can’t appreciate without standing under them. Omega Centauri, she said, is even more majestic through a telescope: the largest cluster of stars orbiting our galaxy’s center, a tight, ancient metropolis of stellar neighbors.

Then she turned our attention to the Eta Carinae Nebula, a luminous cloud of gas and dust spanning tens to hundreds of light years. At its heart lives Eta Carinae, an unstable behemoth that astronomers watch nervously — it may be the next star to end its life in a spectacular supernova. The thought sent a delicious shiver through the group: witnessing both the calm beauty and the raw, unpredictable drama of the cosmos.

She reminded us that the Southern Cross is woven into everyday life here — gracing the flags of New Zealand and Australia — yet many people from the northern hemisphere have never seen it. Standing beneath those familiar symbols of the southern sky, with Margarita’s laser sketching their shapes, I felt like a delighted newcomer again: small, awed and lucky to be learning these constellations one bright point at a time.

Under the Atacama’s impossibly dark dome, the Milky Way unrolls like a pearly ribbon across the sky — our home galaxy made visible in glittering relief. Here, far from city glow, the spiral of stars, gas and dust reads like a map of cosmic history: a soft milky band that gives the galaxy its name and makes you feel pleasantly, deliciously small.

One little constellation of stories and light that always catches my eye is the Pleiades, the “Seven Sisters.” To the naked eye, they appear as a tight, sparkling cluster — seven bright pinpricks that folklore dressed up as the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. In Taurus, they sit together like gossiping friends; up close through binoculars or a telescope, dozens more stars spill out, turning a simple cluster into a crowded jewel-box.

Then there’s Orion’s Belt, a clean, striking line of three stars — Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka — that slice across the winter night (or southern-hemisphere summer). An unmistakable asterism, it goes by many names — Three Kings, Three Sisters — and feels like a celestial road sign pointing the way across the sky. Standing beneath these constellations in the Atacama, with Margarita pointing them out and the desert silence all around, the heavens felt somehow both familiar and thrillingly remote.

Overhead, Sirius — the famous Dog Star — blazes with an almost mischievous brightness, while nearby the twin jewels, Alpha and Beta Centauri, anchor the broad sweep of Centaurus. Antares glows a smoky red-orange and Canopus, regal and steady, presides from the constellation Carina.

Look a little deeper and the sky rewards you: the Magellanic Clouds drift like soft, silvery smudges — two small companion galaxies that circle our Milky Way — and hydrogen nebulae paint delicate red washes where new stars are being born. In a place this dry and high, the air seems to let the cosmos breathe freely; every pinprick of light feels closer, sharper, more intimate.

Margarita summed it up perfectly: the Southern Hemisphere simply gives you the heart of the Milky Way. From the Atacama you’re facing the galactic center, so the star fields are denser, the constellations bolder and the Milky Way’s band stretches across the sky in breathtaking detail. Constellations like the Southern Cross, Centaurus and Carina — invisible from much of the North — become familiar companions and brilliant stars such as Sirius, Canopus and Alpha Centauri seem to compete for attention.

If you want the Milky Way in all its glory, come south. The Atacama’s nights don’t just show you the stars; they invite you to linger.

Peer Through Giant Telescopes & Touch the Stars

Margarita set up the two telescopes with the easy confidence of someone who knows the sky like a favorite map. One by one, she pointed them at distant lights, inviting us to take turns peering — no hands on the glass, just the hush of shared wonder. Through the eyepiece, we floated from the Moon’s cratered face to wisps of nebulae and tiny, trembling pinpricks of “old” stars, until she finally guided us to the most poetic sights: baby stars.

A baby star, or protostar, is the universe’s very own nursery rhyme. It begins inside a thick, dark cloud of gas and dust — a nebula — where gravity coaxingly squeezes the cloud until a dense, warm core forms. That core, hidden at first, swells and heats as it feeds on surrounding material. Over time, it brightens and grows, finally reaching the blistering temperatures needed for hydrogen to ignite and a new star to be born. The remaining dust and gas spiral into a disk that can one day become planets, a tiny planetary blueprint circling its newborn sun.

Margarita told us that protostars don’t just quietly accumulate mass; they also sneeze — expelling jets of gas and dust in dramatic bursts. Some nebulae are real star-making factories: the Orion Nebula, for example, hosts thousands of these fledgling lights. Standing there, under a sky full of beginnings, it felt less like watching distant science and more like witnessing a cosmic cradle song — an intimate reminder that even the heavens have a lifecycle and even stars start small.

The Moon — Earth’s lone companion — hung above us like a familiar, silvery postcard. It sits about 238,600 miles away, a rocky, restless world with just one-sixth of our gravity, quietly composed of iron, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, titanium and even flecks of gold, silver and mercury. As it circles us, its face shifts through eight delicate moods, each phase a new costume in an age-old celestial performance.

Peering through the telescope that night felt like sneaking up close to a secret. I’d never seen the lunar landscape with such clarity — craters rimmed in crisp shadow, plains so sharply defined they seemed almost painted. Margarita, ever ready with mischief, balanced our phones on the eyepiece and captured a handful of imperfect, perfect images: little souvenirs of a moment that felt exactly like a postcard from the universe.

Old stars feel like the universe’s grandparents — some are nearly as old as the cosmos itself, clocking in around 13.8 billion years. Astronomers read their life stories in subtle clues: how slowly they spin (stars lose momentum as they age), whether they still wear dusty protoplanetary disks (a telltale sign of youth) and the mix of heavy elements inside them — the earliest stars formed before the universe filled with metals, so they tend to be scarce in heavier elements.

You can also tell a star’s age by looking: reddish and orange suns are older and cooler, while white-blue ones blaze hotter and younger. Bigger, beefier stars usually spin faster than the daintier, lighter ones. It’s a simple palette — color, size, spin, composition — but it paints a whole cosmic biography.

Through the telescope that night, the sky put on a show. Some blobs were sharp and well-defined, like polished gems; others wavered and shimmered, as if laid on a sheet of jelly or trailing wisps like the tails of celestial comets. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. There’s a special kind of wonder in watching the deep past sparkle back at you — a memorable, humbling kind of travel that needs no passport.

Pose with the Stars, Sip Hot Chocolate

Margarita turned a simple moment into pure magic. She arranged for each of us to be photographed gazing up at the night sky, setting a soft light to gently illuminate our backside while using a long exposure to capture the stars wheeling overhead. The resulting photo felt like a tiny miracle — an intimate portrait framed by the universe.

To cap an already magical evening, Margarita led us to a small folding table set with an assortment of snacks and steaming mugs of hot chocolate. We sipped the sweet warmth as a gentle projection on a nearby monitor painted the night sky above us, constellations and stories unfolding in soft light. Wrapped in blankets and quiet conversation, the cold and fatigue melted away. Around midnight we made our way back to our accommodation, noses rosy from the chill and slipped into bed with happy, sleepy smiles.

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