ASTRONOMY'S WONDER OBSERVATORIES

AFTER 30 hours of bumping along on planes and buses, at long last I stood in the darkness and gazed upon a immense night sky.

My long journey seemingly had brought me to the shoreline of interstellar space rather than the high altitude plateau that is the Atacama Desert in Chile.

It was the first night of a monthlong journey to visit astronomy observatories in Chile, Los Angeles and Hawaii. Whether designed for professional use or for the general public, observatories nurture humanity's explorations of the cosmos.

They awaken wonder and discovery, but even before I set foot inside the first one, I was seeing outer space in spellbounding new way.

It was early May, autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, and out group had spent nearly five hours staring at the  night  sky. We had met in San Pedro de Atacama, a small town 7,500 feet above sea level near Chile's border with Bolivia.

Judging by the legion of backpacks, hostels and prominent Wi-Fi signs, it sits firmly astride the trekking circuit of Latin America.

During the  24 hours I was there, I met people from the United States, Brazil, France, Canada, Italy, Britain, Australia and  New Zealand. Activities abound : There are mountain bikes to rent, salt flats to visit and pink flamingos to photograph.

However, i was there to stargaze.. The Atacama is the driest desert in the world. The combination of its aridity, high altitude and low population results in exceptional   seeing,  an astronomy term for the quality of observing conditions.

 offered severe night sky tours, but this area just isn't for the amateurs. Chile - primarily in the Atacama - contains 70 percent of the world's professional astronomy observatories, if you count the huge new ones under construction like Giant Magellan Telescope.

While in San Pedro de  Atacama, I also wanted to visit the Atacama Large Milli-meter/ submillimeter Array, known as ALMA. Built by a consortium of countries, ALMA is ''the most complex astronomical observatory ever built on earth,'' according to its  United States partner, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Like the large  Hadron Collidor at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research  on the outskirts of Geneva, which I visited several months ago,  the ambition and scale of this facility makes a popular place to visit.

Reservations are tough to get, although its isolation helps the last-minute traveler. Every Saturday and Sunday, a bust leaves  San Pedro de Atacama and takes tourists to visit  ALMA's  Operations Support Facility  in the empty desert  a half-hour away.

Although free tickets are snapped up months months in advance, those without reservations show up at the  stop anyway and often are rewarded. On the Saturday that I visited, only one person was left behind, even though at least a dozen had not reserved ahead of time.

The Honor and Serving    of  the  latest Operational Research on Astronomy's Top Observatories continues. The World Students Society thanks author and researcher Peter Kuja Winski.