potw2501 — Foto van de Week
Perfectly framed
6 januari 2025: Astronomers mostly focus their attention on the sky, but sometimes it’s worth looking around our planet, too. At night, the star-spangled sky over Chile’s Atacama Desert steals the limelight, but once the barren landscape basks in sunlight again, other marvels are revealed. This Picture of the Week, for instance, could easily feature in a travel magazine. It is taken from Pukará de Quitor (Fort of Quitor), a stone fortress built centuries ago by the Licán Antai community, also known as Atacameños. You find it near San Pedro de Atacama, not far from where the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is housed, the radio telescope array which ESO operates together with its international partners. In this picture, the arch of the fortress is framing the Licancabur volcano, which looms up next to Chile’s border with Bolivia. On the mountain, other archaeological sites have been found, and its summit crater hides one ...
