Atacama Desert

The winter nights may be long, but they don’t have to be dull, even for folks with small apartments who don’t have room for an extra big telescope. Unistellar’s latest telescope, the Odyssey, is half the size and less than half the weight of the company’s last big release from 2023. However, with a few taps on your phone, it still makes it easier than ever to zoom in on your favorite planet, star, nebula, or distant galaxy.Will You Click Windows’ New Copilot Button?Last year’s Unistellar model, the eQuinox 2, also…

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. This story was produced by Grist and co-published with El País. A Spanish-language version can be read here. Reporting was supported by the Joan Konner Program in the Journalism of Ideas. Tiffany & Co. Released NFTs (and They’re Ugly)On the morning of June 12, 2022, Ángela Astudillo, then a law student in her mid-20s, grabbed her water bottle and hopped into her red Nissan Juke. The co-founder of Dress Desert, or Desierto…

The world’s fast-fashion addiction is wrecking the planet. It’s also contributing to an enormous and growing pile of clothing that is sitting in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Tiffany & Co. Released NFTs (and They’re Ugly)SkyFi, a company that provides access to satellite imagery, recently shared a striking view of the Atacama Desert. The company explained in a blog post last week that members of itsDiscord channel had helped find the coordinates for the growing graveyard of trashed garments. “By purchasing a $44 Existing…

Last fall, NASA’s DART spacecraft smashed into Dimorphos, a small asteroid some 7 million miles away, in an unprecedented attempt to change the orbit of a natural body in space. Now, two teams of astronomers have released images of the collision’s aftermath taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope.The researchers found that the ejected cloud of debris from the asteroid appeared more blue than the space rock itself, indicating that Dimorphos is composed of fine particles. But as time passed after…

An increasing number of satellites in Earth orbit is threatening observations of the sky.Photo: ESOAstronomers looking up at the night skies have started to feel the effects of the growing number of satellites swarming Earth orbit, and they want to do something about it before it’s too late. An international group of astronomy organizations have banded together to petition the United Nations, asking it to form a group that monitors the impact of satellites on astronomy.The European Southern Observatory (ESO), the…

The Unistellar eQuinox 2 boasts light pollution reduction technology to give people back the night sky.Photo: Kyle Barr/GizmodoIt’s sometimes easy to forget Las Vegas is built on a desert. It’s a long, flat plane that angles up toward the rim of multiple mountain ranges, like a high-rimmed plate. And as imagery from space shows, Las Vegas, sitting in the center of that plate, is an immense concentration of bright light surrounded by a stretch of Nevada desert darkness.For any amateur astronomer living in Las Vegas, the…

Two species near the areas where lithium mining is most popular have seen their numbers decline betweeo 10 and 12%.Photo: John Moore (Getty Images)“You can explain the effects specifically from lithium extraction,” Cristina Dorador, co-author of the study, told Reuters in March.There’s a bit of a silver lining in the study: Flamingo populations did not decline in other areas of the desert, the research showed, and birds who usually nest and feed in Salar de Atacama could just travel to other regions. Still, the…

The group building the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile has secured a $205 million investment that will help push construction of the massive instrument over the finish line. The money will go toward the facility that will house the telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory high in Chile’s Atacama Desert. When the telescope is complete, it will be 83 feet across and will have 10 times the light collecting area and four times the spatial resolution of the Webb Space Telescope, according to a release from the Giant…