Welcome to ATAN

The Atacama desert, in northern Chile, is the driest and most ancient desert of the world. This narrow strip of land, where the Sun shines more than 320 days per year, has something special: due to the dry air, high altitude and the lacking of light pollution, the Atacama desert is by far the best place on Earth to observe the sky.



In the Atacama desert the stars shine like no other place on Earth. There are so many stars during a normal night that you can easily get lost and not recognise even the brightest constellations. The Milky Way, especially the winter portion (that is summer for northern hemisphere observers) is so bright that can illuminate the ground. The brightest planets, like Venus and Jupiter, and even the brightest stars, like Sirius, cast an obvious shadow on the ground. In Atacama desert, then, we can observe the real Universe, we can think about the big questions of our lives and we can feel part of the Cosmos.

ATacama At Night (ATAN) is a photographic project created by Daniele Gasparri, an astrophysicist, science writer and astrophotographer moved to the Atacama desert. During it's free time Daniele travels to the most remote and amazing places of the desert to observe the sky and discover the unique connection between Earth and Cosmos, between Humans and all the amazing beauty that surround us, every night, from the beginning or our existence.

Let's all enjoy the extraordinary beauty of our Universe by looking at these places where all started, including the existence of our planet and our species.

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