File:Southern Coastal Region.jpg

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Image title	The cold Pacific Ocean bathes the coast of Antofagasta, the capital of the II Region of Chile. Antofagasta stretches along about 20 km of a narrow coastal region, demarcated by the Pacific Ocean and the Coastal Mountain Range. With more than 300 000 habitants, Antofagasta is the fifth-largest city of Chile, and the mining capital of the country. Furthermore, the Antofagasta Region is home to the world’s largest ground-based astronomical observatories. The ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), on Cerro Paranal is located some 120 km south of Antofagasta, on the Coastal Mountain Range. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is currently under construction on the 5000-metre-high Chajnantor Plateau, in the Andes close to San Pedro de Atacama. And Cerro Armazones, the selected site for the planned European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), is located about 20 km away from Cerro Paranal. The E-ELT will be the world’s biggest eye on the sky. Thanks to the oceanic cold stream, the area of the Coastal Mountain Range around Paranal Observatory offers exceptional conditions to ground-based optical astronomy.
Date and time of data generation	18:19, 16 April 2011
Source	European Southern Observatory
Credit/Provider	P. Zidar/ESO
Short title	The Coast of Antofagasta
Keywords	Antofagasta
Contact information	http://www.eso.org/ Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2 Garching bei München, , D-85748 Germany
Usage terms	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
IIM version	4