Residents of the world's driest desert, the Atacama in northern Chile, woke up on Thursday to a stunning sight: its famous lunar landscape covered in snow, UNN reports with reference to AFP.
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"Unbelievable! The Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world, covered in snow," wrote the ALMA observatory, located at an altitude of 2900 meters above sea level, on X, along with a video of vast spaces covered in a white blanket.
The observatory added that although snow is common on the nearby Chajnantor plateau, located at an altitude of over 5000 meters, where its giant telescope is located, there had been no snow at its main facility for ten years.
Climatologist Raúl Cordero from the University of Santiago told AFP that it was too early to link the snow to climate change, but noted that climate modeling showed that "this type of event, i.e., precipitation in the Atacama Desert, is likely to occur more frequently."
The Atacama, home to the darkest skies in the world, has been home to the world's most advanced telescopes for decades.
The ALMA telescope, developed by the European Southern Observatory, the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, is widely recognized as the most powerful.
New revolutionary telescope shows first images of the sky23.06.25, 08:50 • [views_3854]