The chillers that cool the large La Silla telescope
are isolated from the dome to minimize vibration.
The dirt road to La Silla blends perfectly with the dun-colored plain and the mountain
on which the telescopes sit. A herd of shaggy, brown, free-range goats crossing the
road would be almost invisible if their hooves didn't create little explosions of
dust. There is so little vegetation, you wonder if the goats have somehow learned
to eat rocks. The only contrasting colors are black condors circling on thermals
in an almost azure sky.
The other contrast is between the desert's rawness and the sparkling mountaintop
technology that lets astronomers probe the mind-numbing mysteries of the cosmos.
Silva displays a parental concern about the largest of La Silla's telescopes.
"How could we spend so much on a wonderful building and telescope like this
and then 'destroy' the information in the last 15 meters?" Silva asks. "My
mission was to design and install a system that would keep the air temperature inside
the dome the same temperature as it would be outside the dome at night. Only then
could the dome be opened without letting heated air escape."