The desert and the ocean

This image presents a quite uncommon picture: taken at the Paranal Observatory, ESO Photo Ambassador Gabriel Grammer was looking to the west just to see the Pacific Ocean. Even though Paranal is located high above sea level in the Atacama Desert, it is only 12 km away from the shore. However, most of the time, the view to the ocean is disturbed by a thick layer of low altitude clouds and seeing the ships passing close by happens rarely.