Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

One Night in Paranal

2020; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-030-55811-6_1

2197-6651

Pierre Léna,

Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae

In these latitudes, night falls quickly. At midday, the Atacama desert in Chile, drenched in heat under the almost vertical noonday sun, loses its shadows, its relief, and its colours, only to get them back at the close of day. To the west, a veil of white hugging the horizon has now become a layer of nearby cloud, and beneath this, a few kilometers away but invisible, lies the Pacific Ocean. Far away to the north-east, the peak of the volcano Licancabur (5916 m) and the snow-topped Andes form the horizon, above which the dark shadow of the Earth is now climbing.