Thanks to the lack of light pollution and altitude, the Atacama has some of the clearest night skies on earth, making for excellent stargazing. Cool off from the desert heat with refreshing swims in ...

When Eduardo Unda-Sanzana arrived in Chile’s Atacama Desert to teach astronomy, the darkness was disorienting. The remote location of the small observatory at Catholic University of the North made it ...

Imagine a landscape so barren it resembles Mars itself, where some weather stations have never recorded a single drop of rain in their entire operational history. This isn't science fiction – it's the ...

A vast high plateau in the far northwest of Argentina, the Puna de Atacama is “how the planet looked before us, almost before ...

The Atacama Desert in northern Chile offers an extraordinary travel experience that captivates adventurers, astronomers and nature enthusiasts alike. With its extreme altitude, crystal-clear skies and ...

Perhaps the hardiest assemblage of lichens and other fungi and algae yet found has been hiding in plain sight in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. This newly discovered “grit-crust,” as ecologists have ...

The rugged terrain of Chile’s Atacama Desert is etched with giant images of llamas, cats, fish, birds, and humans. Together, the geoglyphs recall a time when the barren expanse of sand and rock was a ...

The driest, highest desert on Earth, Chile's Atacama Desert, also holds the world's richest nitrate and iodine deposits. As such, a "white gold" rush there fueled Europe's bombs in World War I and ...

Benito Gómez-Silva is surrounded by nothing. For as far as the eye can see, no plants dot the landscape; no animals amble across the salt-crusted soil that stretches out to the base of distant ...