Astrophotography in Chile: Dark Sky Sites from the Elqui Valley to the Atacama

Chile is where the world’s professional astronomers put their telescopes, and the reasons they chose it are the same ones that matter for a camera on a tripod: dry air, high ground and long stretches of country with almost nobody living in it. The north of the country, from the Coquimbo Region up through the Atacama Desert, is the part that counts.

Two of those places are now certified by DarkSky International, and several of the observatories open their gates to visitors. This guide covers both, with what each one suits.

Gabriela Mistral Dark Sky Sanctuary, Elqui Valley

In 2015 this became the first International Dark Sky Sanctuary anywhere. It is the land around the AURA observatory site in the Elqui Valley, about 364 square kilometres that the land title restricts to astronomical research. That restriction is why the sky over it has stayed dark for decades.

Cerro Tololo, one of the observatories on the site, sits at 2,200 metres and is about 80 km by road from La Serena. The sanctuary itself is a research site rather than a campground, so plan to photograph from the valley and the roads around it rather than inside the protected land.

Suits: a first trip. La Serena has an airport, the Elqui Valley has places to stay, and the drive from the coast into a properly dark sky is short.

Río Hurtado, Coquimbo Region

Certified as an International Dark Sky Community in 2025, which made it Chile’s second International Dark Sky Place. The commune covers more than 2,100 square kilometres of Andean foothills and river valleys with 22 small villages, and its listing claims more than 300 cloudless nights a year.

Río Hurtado passed a light-pollution ordinance in 2025 that covers public and private lighting. The private observatories Obstech El Sauce and Deep Sky Chile run remote telescope hosting here, which tells you what serious imagers think of the sky. The community recommends November to March for visits, when the weather is most stable.

Suits: a longer stay, and anyone considering hosting a remote telescope in the southern hemisphere.

Paranal, Antofagasta Region

ESO’s Very Large Telescope stands on Cerro Paranal at 2,635 metres in the Atacama Desert. ESO runs free guided tours every Saturday, booked through its online form only, and it does not provide transport or fuel, so you need your own car.

The tours are by day. For your own night photography, the empty desert along the coast range gives you the same dry air without the observatory’s restrictions.

Suits: wide-field Milky Way work and anyone who wants to see a professional site on the same trip.

La Silla, Coquimbo Region

ESO’s other observatory open to the public, about 600 km north of Santiago at 2,400 metres, on the southern edge of the Atacama. It also opens to visitors on weekends, booked in advance.

Suits: combining with an Elqui Valley trip, since both are within reach of La Serena.

San Pedro de Atacama and the Chajnantor plateau

The ALMA radio telescope array sits on the Chajnantor plateau at about 5,000 metres, with its operations base at about 2,900 metres. San Pedro de Atacama is the town most visitors use as a base for this part of the desert.

Altitude is the real constraint here. Thin air makes every task slower, the cold drains batteries, and a night of imaging at that height is harder than it looks on a map. Most people get better results from lower ground near town, where they can think clearly at 3am.

Suits: experienced travellers who have planned for altitude. Not a first night out.

What the Chilean sky gives you

From 23 to 30 degrees south, the centre of the Milky Way passes nearly overhead in the southern winter, June to August, and the targets northern tutorials never mention are high and easy: the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the Carina Nebula, Omega Centauri and 47 Tucanae. A short refractor and a tracker can fill a season.

The dry air has a second benefit that shows up at home. Less water vapour means less scattered light, and less scattered light means a flatter background in every frame, with smaller gradients to remove after stacking.

Processing what you bring home

Akastroid stacks and finishes deep-sky, Milky Way and planetary sessions on your own computer, without uploading anything. The free download processes three sessions and allows one export, enough to take one Chilean night from raw frames to a finished picture. If you buy a licence afterwards, PayPal takes the payment from Chile, with a PayPal account or a debit or credit card.

If you travelled with a Seestar or a Dwarf, smart telescope image processing explains what to do with the folder it wrote, and removing light-pollution gradients shows how much less work a Chilean sky leaves for that step.