Counting Stars
“There it is… that’s the North Star,” I proudly said to our guide, pointing at the brightest star in the sky. Turns out, I was pointing to Mars. Astronomy clearly isn’t my strongest suit, but that’s no surprise. I’d normally only be able to identify the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt, but here in the southern hemisphere, neither of these constellations appear as how I would normally recognise them. Lying on a bed outdoors and wrapped in a fleece blanket, I realised how little I knew about the universe and just how much of it I could see—the Milky Way included—with my naked eye.
Stargazing is just one of the things taken to another level at the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. To say it’s a
