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00:00 site local. Astronomical dark, moon down. Sun -79°. Moon 1% waning crescent. Median SQM 21.9. No long moonless night in the published window

Book a Night

Director

Renata Alcayaga

Here since
2011
Sessions
2
Log entries
2
“People arrive wanting the photograph. They leave talking about the twenty minutes they spent at the eyepiece not photographing anything.”

Renata founded Umbra in 2011 after nine years of survey work further north, and has run it since. Most of that time has gone on two things: keeping the optics working and keeping the sky dark.

The second is the harder job. The plateau has no fixed lighting, no security floods and no illuminated signage, and every one of those absences was argued for individually. The road to the site is unlit for the last eleven kilometres because Renata spent two years persuading the regional authority that it should stay that way.

Runs Deep Field most weeks and the residency programme in winter.