Astro tour - watching the sky and its hidden treasures

It's 8:30pm, the sun has set a while ago but it is still 'blue hour'. Ivan from Amatista Travelspicks me up and brings me for the astro-tour on his family property in Diaguitas where they have set up with his wife a beautiful secluded star-gazing platform, away from the village lights. Two other visitors arrive and we have an almost private tour the 3 of us on this Sunday night.

Ivan is passionate about astronomy. He started out giving us an introduction about the characteristics of this place in the valley where the conditions are among the best in the world to observe the sky. And also the question: how has astronomy served mankind and still does? A deep question and long interactive answer. All this while we were sipping our drinks (I had a fresh juice of nispero that grows on their property and the 2 other guests had a famous local pisco sour made with lemons from their orchard).We then got to the telescope and Ivan pointed it at different 'celestial objects'. Through the telescope we got to see open start clusters, nebulous, the planets Jupiter with its 2 stripes and Saturn with its clearly visible ring. We also took the binoculars to see more stars and clusters, really impressive. Finally we got a close up of the moon through the telescope, so bright in the sky and so beautiful in all its details, and easy to capture with the phone camera.

Did you know that from the earth we can only ever see the same side of the moon? It turns around itself at the same speed as it turns around the Earth, making it always facing the same direction. This means: no one on Earth who hasn't been to space has ever seen the other hidden side of the moon!

At the end came the part that had made me choose this particular tour: laying down on yoga mats with blankets and listening to a sound healing session with Tibetans bowls, also led by Ivan. A beautiful way to meditate while looking at the sky and the millions of stars above, making it all really magical. I also loved how he concluded the tour with the perspective of how immense and far away these objects are and the perspective of our own planet and the importance of caring for our Earth.

This reminded me of the 'Overview effect' that I had heard about a year ago in Paris: the emotion that astronauts who have been to space and seen our blue planet from so far away report while feeling a deep love for the Earth and a strong need to protect it. Read more about this Overview Effect here. Well, being here under the immense dark sky full of stars feeling so tiny, may it be possible to feel something similar?

After a total of 2,5 hours, I had learned a lot and didn't see the time go by and even feel a bit shaken up. If you ever get there, I highly recommend Amatista Travels! An experience for the eyes, the mind and the soul.

Gift picture taken for visitors!

What we observe in the telescope:

Celestial objects of the deep sky

- Tarantula Nebula - 'an extremely luminous non-stellar object' that is 160,000 light-years away from the Earth! As a comparison, the sun is 'only' 0.00001581 light years away, or 8 light minutes. And the moon: 1,25 light seconds away.

Photo from Wikipedia (we couldn't see as much detail in the telescope but it was still very impressive

- Butterfly cluster (cumulo abierto mariposa)

Photo from Wikipedia

- Ptolemy Cluster - almost 1000 light years away (cumulo abierto Ptolomeo)

Photo from Wikipedia

- Pleiades Cluster (Cumulo abierto Las Pleyades) - 444 light years away

Wiki: 'Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood.'

Photo credit Vidmulia

- Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae - 13'000 light years away!

Photo Wikipedia Credit ESO

Full list of observations

Objetos Celestes de Cielo Profundo:

*Nebulosa: Tarántula

*Cúmulo Abierto: Mariposa, Ptolomeo y Las Pleyades

*Cúmulo Globular: 47 Tucana

Planetas:

*Júpiter y sus Satélites Naturales

*Saturno

Constelaciones

*Escorpión

*Sagitario (Asterismo de la Tetera)

Estrellas de Primera Magnitud (las más Brillantes) - with the naked eye

Achernar (Blanco-Azul) 

Aldebarán (Naranjo-Rojo)

Alfa Centauri (Amarilla) 

Rigel (Blanco-Azul)

Altair (Blanca) 

Canopus (blanca)

Antares (Naranjo-Rojo)

La Luna