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The European Southern Observatory is at serious risk of losing clear skies over its Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, officials said, because of an industrial complex proposed by the subsidiary of an energy company of the United States.
The Paranal Observatory is home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), which comprises four telescopes each with a 27-foot (8.2-meter) mirror and four auxiliary telescopes with 6-foot (1.8 meters). Working together, the telescopes produce some of the sharpest views of the universe. Observatory officials are seriously concerned that the proposed industrial project will go ahead, diminishing what Paranal can see and permanently changing nighttime visibility in some of the best skies for astronomical research.
Right next door
The project, called Inna, is a proposed green hydrogen project on an industrial scale. The total footprint of the project will cover more than 7,413 hectares of the Atacama and include a port, ammonia and hydrogen production facilities, and thousands of electrical generators.
All of this would have to be built from the ground up, with the proposed project site located 3 to 7 miles (5 to 11 kilometers) from the Paranal telescopes. The company, AES Andes, submitted an Environmental Impact Assessment for the project to the Chilean authorities at the end of last month.
“As with any project, our partnership with local communities and stakeholders is an absolute priority, ensuring that we support local economic development while maintaining the highest environmental and safety standards,” said Javier Dib, Leader of the AES Market Market of AES, in one company statement announcing the submission.
Well, the environmental impacts are precisely what officials of the European Southern Observatory are concerned about. The Atacama Desert has some of the darker, clearer skies anywhere on Earth. There is little moisture in the air, minimizing the amount of light absorbed by water in the atmosphere, and it is at high elevation, reducing the amount of wobble that Earth-based astronomers are usually faced with when imaging distant sources through the atmosphere.
The unique location and impact of Paranal
From its perch in Chile’s Atacama, the Very Large Telescope has captured ancient and recent astronomical events, both in our galaxy and beyond. In 2021, the telescope images taken of 42 of the largest asteroids in the solar system. He continued the trend of space rock in 2023, when two teams revealed the image of the telescope of the consequence of NASA’s DART mission, which tested the viability of changing the orbit of a natural body in space. The same year, the telescope spotted gas clouds that may have formed after the first stars and, just two months ago, a different team used the telescope to capture the first detailed image of a star outside our galaxy.
Due to the natural disposition of the Atacama for astronomy, it is home to several current and planned telescopes, including Paranal, the Rubin Observatory (which houses the largest digital camera in the world), and the construction under construction . Giant Magellan Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory. The LSST Camera at the Rubin Observatory will have its first light later this year – something to look forward to in a year. full of astronomical events.
“Chile, and Paranal in particular, is a truly special place for astronomy – its dark skies are a natural heritage that transcends its borders and benefits all of humanity,” said Itziar de Gregorio, Representative of the ‘ESO in Chile, in an observatory. liberation. “It is crucial to consider alternative locations for this megaproject that do not endanger one of the world’s most important astronomical treasures.”
In 2022, a team of researchers found that the light pollution over the Paranal was much less than that of 27 other major observatories. This research found that two-thirds of all large observatories the team studied already have an increase in light pollution of 10% above assumed natural levels, suggesting that light pollution is already having a serious toll on astronomical observations. .
“The results emerging from this work send what could be the ultimate call for serious, collective, unambiguous, uncompromising action to reduce light pollution now, whether generated by artificial light or reflected sunlight from orbiting artificial objects,” the team wrote. “Failure to take action implies a progressive decline in our ability to explore our Universe.”
Astronomy under threat
“The proximity of the AES Andes industrial megaproject to Paranal poses a critical risk to the most pristine night skies on the planet,” ESO Director General Xavier Barcons said in the observatory’s statement. “Dust emissions during construction, increased atmospheric turbulence, and especially light pollution will have an irreparable impact on the capacities for astronomical observation, which until now have attracted multi-billion euro investments from the governments of the ESO Member States”.
Infrastructure on the ground is not only the concern of astronomers. Earth’s orbit is cluttered with satellites that complicate images of the night sky. Megaconstellations including SpaceX’s Starlink create stripes on astronomical images as the individual spacecraft transits the night sky. Such satellites also swarm vex space telescopes, as seen in some Hubble Space Telescopes imagine. There are cleaning tricks astronomical images of these stripes, but they are still a problem.
Light pollution is worseaccording to recent research. In 2023, a group of researchers reviewed more than 50,000 observations made around the world between 2011 and 2022 as part of NOIRLab. Night globe project The researchers found that the night sky became 9.6% brighter every year, causing some darker stars to disappear completely in the sky for some stargazers.
The impact of light pollution on the Atacama and astronomy
Eventually, the Very Large Telescope will be succeeded by the Extremely large telescope (inventive names, I know), which will be 128 feet (39 meters) wide and is set to become the largest visible and infrared light telescope in the world. The Extremely Large Telescope will collect 100 million times more light than the human eye and reveal details of distant exoplanets, black holes, the evolution of galaxies and the early days of the universe. The telescope will be located near the VLT, at Cerro Armazones, and its first light is now scheduled for 2028, although the ESO. website offers a more cautious “end of this decade”.
“Astronomical observatories can be seen as the proverbial canary in a coal mine,” wrote the team that evaluated the relative obscurity of the observatory’s sky in their 2022 paper. “If we are not able to to keep the canary alive, then we can forget to be able to solve the problem of light pollution as a global environmental problem”. In addition, the group noted, another negative consequences of light pollution will persist, including the disruption of circadian rhythms and other negative health consequences in the Earth’s biodiversity.
In its release, the ESO advocated for the transfer of the AES Andes project, stating that the movement of the industrial complex “remains the only effective way to prevent irreversible damage to the unique skies of Paranal”. Meanwhile, the company is waiting for word from the Chilean authorities on whether the environmental impact of the project is minimal enough to proceed as proposed.
A basis of the company’s message is the decarbonization of its energy matrix and the increase of the amount of energy from renewable sources. There would be a painful irony in the Chilean authorities that allow a green energy project to proceed at the expense of clear skies for astronomers.
