I am staring through one of the largest public telescopes in the world from an observatory in northern Chile. The tiny sparkling object I’m looking at is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Through my eyepiece it appears to be at a touching distance, but it is actually approximately 8.6 light years away.
Directly above me is the Milky Way, occupying a large stretch of the sky, like a grey brushstroke on a black canvas. It looks magnificent and otherworldly. “The galaxy is the faintest today,” says Eric Escalera, the founder of Observatorio del Pangue, located on top of a mountain in the Elqui Valley.
