EXTREMELY LARGE TELESCOPES, PART

摘要

I was driving a sturdy 4WD pickup truck up a steep and winding gravel road in the Chilean Atacama Desert. It was hard to keep the car under control on the bumpy track. My passengers must have been terrified at every hairpin curve. Only by stopping the truck every now and then could I enjoy the surreal beauty of the surrounding landscape, with the white enclosures of the European Southern Observatory's (ESO's) Very Large Telescope on the horizon, some 20 kilometers away. Our goal: the barren summit of Cerro Armazones, a conical mountain in the Sierra Vicu?a Mackenna range.