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Why doesn't Argentina have more telescopes? (mander.xyz)

submitted 6 months ago by porcoesphino@mander.xyz to c/astronomy@mander.xyz

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Maybe this lives in showerthoughts, but Chile has a lot of large telescopes and you often hear its because they're on mountains above clouds. The border with Argentina goes through the middle of the mountains so it seems like it should be a good spot for telescopes too.

I couldn't find a good reference for why and I was mostly hoping someone would know one. I'm guessing its a combination of:

Argentina's hyperinflation
Chile being the rain shadow side
Chile has more infrastructure close to the mountains

Looking online it looks like there was political pressure from the US for a telescope in Argentina to stop being built because it had some funding from China.

I'm not surprised to see more in Chile, but there seem to be about seven past and upcoming world class telescopes in Chile and none in Argentina. And this list:

https://go-astronomy.com/observatories-chile.php

Is a lot longer than was expecting compared to this list:

https://go-astronomy.com/observatories-argentina.php

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[–] protist@mander.xyz 15 points 6 months ago

You'll find most of Chile's observatories are in the Atacama Desert, and that almost all of the Atacama Desert is in Chile. The high elevation, incredibly low humidity, and remote location make for dark, clear skies