The Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth, utterly inhospitable to human life. So what exactly is it doing in the paradise issue? Appearances can be deceiving—for one group of space scientists gazing skyward, this barren wasteland is little short of heaven.

Bone-dry, baking hot and barren, Chile's Atacama Desert is utterly unsuited to human habitation. Only a few raindrops fall each century, and some parts of this ecological dead zone haven't received a single drop as far back as records show. Climatologists call this unspeakably harsh environment "absolute desert." Most of us would use the term "hell on earth."

But for a lucky few, this is paradise.

It's not hard to guess why for those who find themselves in the luxury of Explora's Hotel de Larache in San Pedro de Atacama, an oasis town in the heart of the desert. I get my welcome to the extremes of the desert sitting at the hotel's long marble bar with a glass of Carmenère Reserve, Chile's signature wine, as urbane santiagueña waitresses float past with trays of delicious food. Buzzing with high rollers from all over the world, the Hotel de Larache offers haute cuisine, Jacuzzis, and soft bed linens to soothe guests after a hard day's sightseeing. In the courtyard, gauchos guide ponies in and out of the stables, while bikini-clad beauties stroll across the lush gardens of wildflowers to take a seat beside one of the three swimming pools.

Even the desert looks tame and artfully designed when viewed through panoramic windows that are designed to channel the breezes onto your brow. It's early evening and the slopes beyond are turning a fiery orange hue.

But I haven't come to the Atacama to drink wine and watch the sunset, enjoyable though it is. I've come to experience a very different kind of paradise that has surfaced in the midst of this merciless terrain.

A day's drive south of San Pedro, between the desert and the deep blue Pacific, hides a hotel that is fashioned from the dreams of architects and astronomers—and it's far, far more exclusive than the luxurious Explora. No tourists are allowed at this "hotel." No amount of money will buy you a bed. And nowhere on this planet is there a keener eye on the universe. It is the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and I am heading there to stare at the stars.

Oh, and the spectacular Comet McNaught just happens to be flying through. This event only takes place every 50,000 years, so it's arguably the best time to visit for countless generations. Despite the many attractions of the Explora, I can't wait to get on the road.

Next morning, however, my enthusiasm is in danger of ebbing quickly away. It's a 4:30 a.m. start, it's pitch black, and it's freezing cold. The darkness has rendered the landscape almost featureless; only a smattering of stars in the sky and the regular plumes of my own breath break the endless void before me. I pump up the heat in the LR2 and begin my marathon drive south.

Rising with the sun in the distance is a chain of snowcapped peaks, several of them cone-shaped volcanoes, with their eastern slopes in Bolivia. Through Moon Valley we go, with its bizarre stone monuments and steep canyons; then, as the temperature outside soars, across the bland sand-colored wastes of the Plain of Patience.

Moving west, I take a pass through the Domeyko Mountain Range. The terrain of these slopes is so dry and otherworldly that in 2004 this area was used by NASA to test-drive the Mars Rover before sending it into outer space for the ultimate off-road challenge. This is as close as you will get to driving on the surface of Mars.

Strange, crystalline formations rise from the desiccated ground like coral, and while the LR2's air-conditioning is doing an admirable job, it's clear from the amount of haze in the distance that the heat all around is intense. On the dashboard, the temperature gauge indicates 113 F, up from a frigid 14 F this morning.

The centerpiece of the Atacama—the salt lake—only looks dead. As you approach, first by car and then walking on a path carved into the dirty cream sea of frozen salt waves, you see flickers of life. Plovers, avocets and Andean seagulls hop around the shallows—but the kings of the lake are the Chilean flamingos, which feed on a kind of tiny shrimp that gives them their rosy hue.

No such vital beauty disturbs the raw aridity of the coastal mountains. Eons older than the Andes, they have been weathered into gently rolling hillocks. The poorly paved back road—abandoned by trucks and sunseekers when the Pan-American Highway opened decades ago—goes straight through a canyon of adobe-hued slopes and rock-strewn plains. If anything, the desert is even more extreme here, bereft of homesteads or other signs of life.

It is, then, something of a shock to suddenly arrive at the entrance to the ESO, 75 miles south of Antofagasta, a few miles inland from the Pacific and, frankly, in the middle of nowhere. Turning right at the ESO's rock signpost, I drive slowly up a beautifully asphalted ribbon of private slip road that rises to over 7,800 feet above sea level. As I drive over a sudden camber in the road, a space station comes into view. Silver panels glisten in the late afternoon sun. Huge disembodied robot heads face upwards.

This is my first glimpse of the solitary telescope complex atop its hill, the Cerro Paranal. It has the incongruity of those classic finales in James Bond films. One moment I am in a wilderness heading nowhere; the next I'm thrust into a secret location harboring unimaginable technologies. The space station is in fact the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the machine at the heart of the ESO: four huge telescopes—each containing a 27-foot-diameter mirror—that work together to see into the depths of space, giving astronomers the best view from earth of all that lies beyond.