The Simons Observatory is located near the summit of Cerro Toco, an extinct stratovolcano located in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile in the Andes Mountain range at an elevation of 5190 meters (17,000 feet).
Given the extreme high-elevation and stable airmass in the Atacama Desert region – considered to be the driest location on Earth – the Simons Observatory site is a premier location worldwide for probing the CMB and gathering related experimental cosmology data.