December – Rain of stars in the desert

In the Atacama Desert in Chile, it rarely rains. Only once every few years does significant rain or snow fall on ESO’s La Silla Observatory, generally coinciding with an anomalously warm weather event such as an El Niño event. This desert is one of the driest places on Earth, making it a fantastic site from which to observe the night sky.

Although there may be very little real rain, some photographic tricks can make the stars appear to rain onto the surrounding mountains, as seen in this image taken by Diana Juncher, a PhD student in astronomy at the Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark.