http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323628004578457203414317068.html
May 2, 2013 - Wall Street Journal
The desert here, with its pristine skies and bone-dry climate, is
luring a bounty of the world's stargazers and raising hopes Chile can
reap a boon in research and development and high-tech industry.
Investments in the astronomy sector are well under way and expected
to reach nearly $6 billion by the end of this decade, giving northern
Chile about 70% of the world's astronomical observatories. Astronomers
say the extreme aridness and lack of light pollution there gives them
less atmospheric distortion than elsewhere in the world.
"In the last five years, there have been on average 280 to 300 clear
nights a year," said Rodrigo Carrasco, an assistant astronomer at the
Gemini Observatory in La Serena in northern Chile's Atacama Desert.
"That's higher than anywhere else and it's a particularity of the
Chilean skies."
...