Sunrise at Las Campanas

This was shot at the end of a spectacular night at the Las Campanas Observatory (Chile), during the same run as this other post. I was at the Magellan Telecope which is a double 6 meter telescope (the two telescopes observe independently). The dome in the photo houses the Henrietta Swope telescope, which has a 1m (40 inch) primary mirror. The picture is taken from the summit where the Magellan telescope is, looking towards the west (towards La Serena, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean). The mountains appears blue because of the scattered light opposite to sunrise.

As I was saying, that was at the end of a spectacular night, but very frustrating, because due to a malfunction in the telescope control system, we were in fact unable to do astronomical observations even for a minute.