Carrier Context :
Unique Projects

  La Silla: a finer view of the heavens

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."

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