Argentina Astrophotography – El Chaltén Night Sky

In 2024 I traveled to Argentina, and one of the most unforgettable experiences of the trip was a night hike near El Chaltén. The region is famous for its dramatic mountains, glaciers, and hiking trails—but it also offers incredibly dark skies. This part of Patagonia is far from large cities, giving you a truly pristine view of the southern hemisphere’s night sky.

This was my first time photographing the sky from Argentina, and I was immediately amazed at how different the stars looked compared to the northern hemisphere. The southern sky reveals Crux (the Southern Cross), the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and the bright arc of the Milky Way rising over the mountain silhouettes. These are objects we cannot see at all from most of North America. Patagonia's exceptionally dark skies make these features stand out even more in long-exposure night photography.

Milky Way rising above the mountains of El Chaltén, Argentina. This 3-image panorama was captured during my night hike in Patagonia using the Canon EOS Ra. The southern sky was extremely dark, revealing the Milky Way arc, the Southern Cross, and faint Magellanic Clouds above the silhouette of the Andes.

Wide 4-image Milky Way panorama photographed near El Chaltén, Argentina. Taken with the Canon EOS Ra under pristine Patagonia skies, the image shows the Milky Way stretching across the horizon with beautiful detail in the galactic structure. Soft background glow from distant mountain huts adds depth to the landscape.

Equipment and Camera Settings

All images were taken with:

• Canon EOS Ra (mirrorless astrophotography camera)
• Canon EF 16–35mm f/2.8L II USM wide-angle lens

Image Set 1:
Canon EOS Ra, EF 16–35mm f/2.8L II USM, f/2.8; ISO 12800, 5 sec exposure
Panorama of 3 images — captured on January 12, 2024 at 11 PM.

Image Set 2:
Canon EOS Ra, EF 16–35mm f/2.8L II USM, f/2.8; ISO 12800, 10 sec exposure
Panorama of 4 images — captured on January 13, 2024.

First Results of the Night Hike

These panoramas are the first results from my night hike. The mountains around El Chaltén create beautiful silhouettes, and in some shots you can see a faint background glow from distant mountain huts. Even with the glow, the sky remained extremely dark—perfect for capturing detail in the Milky Way.

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) were easily visible to the naked eye. Seeing them for the first time is an unforgettable moment for any astrophotographer. They look like two small detached “clouds,” but they are actually dwarf galaxies orbiting our Milky Way.

A New Sky, A New Experience

Photographing the southern sky feels like discovering a different universe. The familiar northern constellations vanish, replaced with stars and structures I had never seen before. Crux, the Southern Cross, stands high above the horizon and serves as a perfect anchor for night panoramas.

Location: El Chaltén, Argentina • Patagonia
Year: 2024 Travel (images processed in 2025)

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What Happened to Meade & Orion? A Major Shift in the Telescope Industry

For decades, Meade Instruments and Orion Telescopes & Binoculars were two of the most familiar names in amateur astronomy. Many beginners bought their first telescope from these brands, and advanced users relied on products like the Meade LX200, Coronado solar telescopes, Orion Dobsonians, and countless accessories.

But between 2019 and 2024, both companies went through major financial and operational trouble. Today, they are no longer manufacturing new telescopes, and their remaining inventory has been liquidated to retailers.

The Decline of Meade Instruments

Meade filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2019 after losing an antitrust lawsuit involving price fixing. Even after being acquired by Orion’s parent company, operations in California gradually shut down. By mid-2024, reports confirmed that Meade’s U.S. offices were closed and staff were laid off. The brand effectively stopped active production.

What Happened to Orion Telescopes?

Orion, founded in 1975, was primarily a U.S.-based retailer selling telescopes manufactured overseas. In 2024, after supply-chain issues and financial strain, their parent company also shut down its California offices. Orion’s website stopped working for long periods and warranty support became uncertain.

Impact on Astronomers and Telescope Owners

This situation has been disappointing for many hobbyists. These brands served:

• Beginners needing affordable starter telescopes
• Advanced users relying on Meade’s Schmidt-Cassegrain systems
• Solar observers using Coronado H-Alpha telescopes

With operations shut down, users now face questions about long-term support, spare parts, and warranty service.

Where to Find Remaining Inventory

One major retailer, High Point Scientific, has acquired a large portion of the remaining Meade, Coronado, and Orion inventory. This includes telescopes, mounts, and accessories.

If you are looking for new old stock — for example a Meade LX200, Coronado solar scope, or Orion accessories — they currently offer a clearance page:

High Point Scientific – Meade & Orion Clearance Inventory

Note: This link leads to a temporary sale page. The inventory is finite and support for these products may become limited in the future.

Should You Buy Remaining Meade or Orion Equipment?

It can be a good deal if:

• You want significant discounts
• You already own Meade/Orion gear and need spare parts
• You understand that warranty and long-term support may be limited

For long-term stability and ongoing product support, many astronomers now recommend brands such as Celestron, Sky-Watcher, Explore Scientific, and various U.S. boutique makers.

The Telescope Community Will Continue

Although the loss of Meade and Orion is a big change, the hobby of astronomy remains strong. New manufacturers, better optics, improved mounts, and advanced astrophotography tools continue to grow.

If you’re new to astronomy or considering upgrading your equipment, there are still many excellent options available — and retailers like High Point Scientific, OPT, and Agena AstroProducts can help guide you.

This situation is an important moment in telescope history, but not the end of amateur astronomy. The sky is still there — and better equipment than ever is available.

Why the Equatorial Sky Glows More Red — Tanzania & Galápagos Astrophotography Experience

          During my last trip to Tanzania, I spent several nights photographing the Milky Way under perfectly dark skies. What caught my attention almost immediately was something unexpected — on photos the sky looked unusually reddish.

Canon EOS Ra, Canon EF200mm f/2.8L II USM Lens, f/3.2; ISO 12800, 15 sec. one photo, Panorama 21 images, combine in Photoshop, September 22, 2025, Nyikani Migration Camp, Tanzania.

       At first, I thought it was just a trick of the weather.

      But the reddish tone wasn’t just a one-night surprise — it appeared the second night, and again the third night, no matter where I set up my tripod.

Canon EOS Ra, Canon EF200mm f/2.8L II USM Lens, f/3.2; ISO 20000, 20 sec. one photo, Panorama 21 images, combine in Photoshop, September 23, 2025, Signature Serengeti Camp, Tanzania.

Canon EOS Ra, Canon EF200mm f/2.8L II USM Lens, f/3.2; ISO 25600, 15 sec. one photo, Panorama 21 images, combine in Photoshop, September 26, 2025, Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

      Later, I went back through some of my older photos taken a few years earlier in the Galápagos Islands, and there it was again — that same faint red glow in the sky background.

Canon EOS 60Da, EF16-35mm f/2.8L II USM, 16.0 sec; f/2.8; ISO 6400, about 40 photos, combine in Photoshop, Feb 23, 2018, Puerto Villamil, Isabela Island, Galapagos, Ecuador.

    Four photos, two locations, years apart… and the same pattern. All were taken under dark, moonless skies far from city lights. The red glow wasn’t from pollution — it was coming from the atmosphere itself.

      So I started digging to find out why.

Why It’s Redder Near the Equator

      After reading through scientific papers and observing reports, I found that this red dominance near the equator isn’t a coincidence — it’s a well-known pattern.

      Near the magnetic equator, the upper atmosphere gets more direct sunlight and stronger ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. That creates more ionization and more energetic electrons high above Earth. When those electrons recombine with oxygen atoms at night, they emit bright red 630 nm light.

   

      Meanwhile, the lower green-emitting layer is denser and warmer in tropical regions. Collisions there often “quench” the green light before it can shine. So while both colors exist everywhere, the red layer wins near the equator — especially during periods of strong solar activity like the one we’re in now.

Toy model: Airglow “color” vs latitude (Green 557.7 nm / Red 630.0 nm)

A Simple Way to Imagine It

Think of it like two glowing shells around Earth:

• A lower green shell — thicker air, more collisions, so light is often quenched
• A higher red shell — thinner air, stronger ionization, shining freely into space.

At higher latitudes, the green layer shines more clearly. Near the equator, the red shell becomes brighter and overshadows it. My camera was basically looking through more of that red upper layer, capturing a stronger crimson glow.

The Beauty of Accidental Science

I didn’t set out to study airglow — I was just chasing the Milky Way. But sometimes astrophotography turns into a kind of quiet citizen science. My four “anecdotal” photos ended up showing a real global trend that scientists have been measuring for decades.

It’s a reminder that even casual night photographers can notice patterns that connect directly to planetary physics. Next time you shoot the night sky near the tropics, look closely when you process your images. If you see a faint red haze in the background, that’s not light pollution or a white-balance mistake — it’s Earth’s upper atmosphere glowing.

Final Thoughts

Standing under the African night with the Milky Way overhead and the warm breeze on my face, I realized that the sky’s color is not fixed. Even in darkness, our planet shines with its own quiet heartbeat — a breath of red light from hundreds of kilometers above.

The next time you photograph a dark sky, remember: sometimes your camera captures more than stars — it records the living atmosphere of the Earth itself.

Related Astrophotography Posts

• Rainbow of the Milky Way and the Eternal Baobab — Tarangire, Tanzania
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• Large Magellanic Cloud - Galapagos Night Landscape Astrophotography
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Rainbow of the Milky Way and the Eternal Baobab — Tarangire, Tanzania

On the midnight of September 26, 2025, under the deep African sky, I captured one of the most surreal moments of light and life. The photograph — a 21-image panorama taken with my Canon EOS Ra and Canon EF 200 mm f/2.8L II USM lens (f/3.2, ISO 25 600, 15 s exposure) — reveals the Milky Way arcing like a celestial rainbow above a solitary baobab tree in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania.

Rainbow of the Milky Way and the Eternal Baobab - Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

This is a single-night image, stitched in Photoshop, but it carries the weight of millennia — both cosmic and earthly.

The Baobab: The Tree of Life

At the center of the frame stands the baobab (Adansonia digitata), often called the Tree of Life. Native to the dry savannas of sub-Saharan Africa, this extraordinary species grows in scattered populations across Tanzania, Madagascar, and parts of the Sahel. Baobabs can live for over 2 000 years — some carbon-dated specimens have reached 2 500 to 3 000 years old — silently witnessing the passing of generations, civilizations, and climates.

Baobab

Their immense trunks, often more than 10 meters in diameter, are actually natural reservoirs; a single tree can hold up to 120 000 liters of water within its fibrous tissue. In the dry season, elephants and baboons are sometimes seen peeling their bark to reach the moisture inside.

In African folklore, the baobab is a sacred symbol — a meeting of heaven and earth. Its branches, reaching skyward like roots, gave rise to legends that the gods planted it upside-down. Standing beside one beneath the Milky Way, the resemblance to a cosmic silhouette feels almost intentional.

Tarangire: The Quiet Heart of the Savanna

Located just south of the equator in northern Tanzania, Tarangire National Park is a sanctuary of vast plains, ancient river valleys, and herds of elephants. Its skies are among the clearest and darkest in East Africa, especially during the dry season from June to October.

That night, around midnight, the air was perfectly still. The southern Milky Way rose high overhead, and the galactic core shimmered in a curtain of color rarely visible to the naked eye.

The Airglow

The subtle green, red, and orange tones in the photo are not from city lights — they are natural airglow, an atmospheric phenomenon that occurs when molecules in the upper atmosphere (about 85–100 km up) emit faint light after being energized by the Sun during the day.

Contrary to popular belief, strong airglow is not limited to the poles; it is often most intense near the equator, where the upper atmosphere experiences greater gravity-wave activity and chemical recombination. Near-equatorial latitudes like Tarangire (~4° S) often produce beautifully structured bands of red (from oxygen at ~250 km) and green (from oxygen at ~95 km) that shimmer across the night sky — invisible to human eyes but captured vividly in long-exposure astrophotography.

What you see above the baobab, therefore, is not light pollution but the Earth itself glowing, whispering its quiet luminescence into the darkness.

A Meeting of Earth and Sky

This image is a meeting of contrasts: an ancient tree rooted in the soil of Africa, and a galaxy 100 000 light-years across suspended above it. Between them, a living, breathing layer of atmosphere paints the bridge — the airglow, the breath of our planet.

Under the Milky Way: A Night in Tarangire

Every color in the image tells a story:

• Amber and red: oxygen recombining high above the equator.
• Soft green: the pulse of Earth’s upper atmosphere.
• Silver stars: the spiral arm of the Milky Way.
• Dark silhouette: a 1 000-year-old baobab tree watching the cosmos turn.

In that moment, Tarangire was not just a national park — it was a reminder that the planet itself participates in the night sky.

Technical Notes

• Camera: Canon EOS Ra (modified for astrophotography)
• Lens: Canon EF 200 mm f/2.8L II USM
• Settings: f/3.2 · 15 s · ISO 25 600
• Panorama: 21 frames combined in Adobe Photoshop
• Date: September 26, 2025
• Location: Tarangire National Park, Tanzania (~4° S latitude)

Reflection

When I look at this photograph, I see time itself — the timeless patience of the baobab and the ceaseless motion of the stars. Both are survivors: one through endurance, the other through orbit.

Under that rainbow Milky Way, I realized that the Earth doesn’t just reflect the universe — it participates in it. The light that touched the baobab that night had traveled for tens of thousands of years, only to meet the glow of our own atmosphere.

Related Astrophotography Posts

• The Milky Way Over the Sailing Stone: A Night Under the Stars at Racetrack Playa, Death Valley National Park, California
• Arches National Park Astrophotography
• Yellowstone Astrophotography
• Grand Teton National Park Nightscape Astrophotography Colter Bay Village Starry Sky Canon 60Da
• Milky Way over Galapagos Astrophotography