The town of San Pedro de Atacama sits at almost 8,000 feet above sea level, which is partially why it’s so dry. Other visitable parts of the desert go up to 17,000 feet—about the same altitude ...

The Atacama Desert in Northern Chile has been a bit of a secret destination for those who love ... indulge in hot springs and hike through salt flats and the aptly named “Moon Valley.” ...

A visit to the Moon Valley won't take up a full day of your trip. ... The most famous among them is Chile's vast Atacama Desert, which overflows into the Bolivian Altiplano.

The Moon Valley provides the region’s most picture-perfect desert snapshot – there are golden dunes and sloping rock formations carved out by the wind and water, with part of the area covered ...

Barren yet beautiful, Chile's Atacama Desert is an alluring world of sand and rock. The sun shines on the rocky ridges of the Valley of the Moon in Chile's Atacama Desert. Photograph by Giulio ...

I feel miniscule in the middle of the desert’s Moon Valley, surrounded by 360-degrees of wind-sculpted waves of vermilion rock, dusted with twinkling emerging minerals.

The Atacama’s extreme aridity means that ecosystems there, even the ones too small to see, are existing at the edge of survival. Image Clay formations and salt deposits in the Valley of the Moon.

The Milky Way shines above Valle de la Luna — meaning "Valley of the moon" — in the Chilean Atacama Desert, close to where the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is located.

Astrophotographer Petr Horálek shot this image of the Milky Way dazzling above strange geological formations in the desert close to the ALMA radio telescope array in Chile.