10 Sights in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile (with Map and Images)
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Explore interesting sights in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Click on a marker on the map to view details about it. Underneath is an overview of the sights with images. A total of 10 sights are available in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.
Activities in San Pedro de Atacama
El Valle de la Luna is located 13 kilometres (8 mi) west of San Pedro de Atacama, in the north of Chile in the Cordillera de la Sal, in the Atacama desert. It has various stone and sand formations which have been carved by wind and water. It has an impressive range of color and texture, looking somewhat similar to the surface of the Moon. There are also dry lakes where the composition of salt makes a white covering layer of the area. It presents diverse saline outcrops which appear like man-made sculptures. There are also a great variety of caverns. When the sun sinks it defines the landscape while the wind blows among the rocks and the sky passes from pink color to purple and finally black. Valle de la Luna is a part of the Reserva Nacional los Flamencos and was declared a Nature Sanctuary in 1982 for its natural environment and strange lunar landscape, from which its name is derived. The Atacama desert is also considered one of the driest places on earth, as some areas have not received a single drop of rain in hundreds of years. A prototype for a Mars rover was tested there by scientists because of the valley's dry and forbidding terrains.
2. Pukará de Quitor
Pukará de Quitor is a pre-Columbian archaeological site in northern Chile. This stone fortress is located 3 km northwest of the town of San Pedro de Atacama, overlooking the valley of the river San Pedro. It was designated a national monument in 1982.
3. Atacama Compact Array (ACA)
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an astronomical interferometer of 66 radio telescopes in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, which observe electromagnetic radiation at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. The array has been constructed on the 5,000 m (16,000 ft) elevation Chajnantor plateau – near the Llano de Chajnantor Observatory and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment. This location was chosen for its high elevation and low humidity, factors which are crucial to reduce noise and decrease signal attenuation due to Earth's atmosphere. ALMA provides insight on star birth during the early Stelliferous era and detailed imaging of local star and planet formation.
4. Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor
The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) is an array of microwave telescopes at a high-altitude site in the Atacama Desert of Chile as part of the Parque Astronómico de Atacama. The CLASS experiment aims to improve our understanding of cosmic dawn when the first stars turned on, test the theory of cosmic inflation, and distinguish between inflationary models of the very early universe by making precise measurements of the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) over 65% of the sky at multiple frequencies in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
5. NANTEN2 observatory
The NANTEN2 Observatory is a southern sky observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is located at an altitude of 4,800 m (15,748 ft) on Pampa la Bola next to Cerro Chajnantor. The observatory is equipped with a millimeter and submillimeter wave telescope that is used for southern sky observations of atomic and molecular spectral lines in 110 GHz to 880 GHz range. It is one of a number of observatories operating at Llano de Chajnantor Observatory. It is operated as a collaboration between research institutes in Japan, South Korea, Germany, Australia and Chile.
6. Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT)
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) was a cosmological millimeter-wave telescope located on Cerro Toco in the Atacama Desert in the north of Chile. ACT made high-sensitivity, arcminute resolution, microwave-wavelength surveys of the sky in order to study the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the relic radiation left by the Big Bang process. Located 40 km from San Pedro de Atacama, at an altitude of 5,190 metres (17,030 ft), it was one of the highest ground-based telescopes in the world.
7. Cerro Toco
Cerro Toco is a stratovolcano located in the eastern part of the Atacama desert in Chile's II Region (Antofagasta), approximately 6 km (4 mi) south of the border between Bolivia and Chile and 12 km (7 mi) SE of the Juriques and Licancabur volcanoes. It conforms the north eastern extreme of the Purico Complex, a pyroclastic shield made up by several stratovolcanoes, lava domes and a maar.
8. Termas de Puritama
Puritama Hot Springs is a series of eight large pools of geothermal spring water located at the bottom of a canyon in the Atacama Desert, in the Antofagasta Region in the north of Chile. It is located at an altitude of 3,475 meters above sea level, 30 km northeast of the town and commune of San Pedro de Atacama and 348 km northeast of Antofagasta, and is a popular tourist attraction.
9. Iglesia de San Lucas
The Church of San Lucas is a Catholic temple located in the town of Toconao, commune of San Pedro de Atacama, region of Antofagasta, Chile. In conjunction with his bell tower, which is separated from the Church, it was declared National Monument of Chile, in the category of Historic Monument, through Supreme Decree No. 5058, of July 6, 1951.
10. Cosmic Background Imager (CBI)
The Cosmic Background Imager was a 13-element interferometer perched at an elevation of 5,080 metres at Llano de Chajnantor Observatory in the Chilean Andes. It started operations in 1999 to study the cosmic microwave background radiation and ran until 2008.
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