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La Silla: a finer view of the heavens

Cerro La Silla, Chile -- The light gathered by the 3.6-meter telescope atop this parched mountaintop has traveled so far it may be the faint signature of a star that no longer exists. So why, asks Manuel Silva, ruin its journey in the last 15 meters?

This was Silva's problem to solve: Without an adequate cooling system, heat escaping from the telescope dome when it was opened at night would distort the light that had traveled thousands of billions of miles to reach the earth -- much the same as heat waves rising from an asphalt road distort the image of oncoming traffic.

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