Scathing Report Claims Energy Megaproject Will Ruin ‘Best Place on Earth for Astronomy’

A new report by the European Southern Observatory says a planned industrial megaproject will significantly brighten the skies in Chile’s Atacama Desert, jeopardizing some of the best conditions in the world for ground-based astronomy. The project would specifically affect the Paranal Observatory, which hosts ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO-South). The report stresses that light pollution at the respective telescopes would increase by at least 35% and more than 50%, hindering scientists’ abilities to observe and understand the universe. The technical summary of the team’s report can be read here. CTAO-South is currently under construction, as is ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the successor to VLT, the site of which was chosen about 15 miles (25 kilometers) from Paranal 15 years ago. The proposed industrial complex is called INNA, short for Proyecto Integrado de Infraestructura Energética para la Generación de Hidrógeno y Amonía ... Read full article.