ESO Photo Ambassador Juan Carlos Muñoz

Juan Carlos Muñoz is currently a Media Officer at the ESO Headquarters in Germany. He was born in 1982 in Don Benito, Spain, and would have become a biologist had he got a microscope instead of a telescope as a gift from his parents. After obtaining his PhD in Astrophysics in Madrid in 2010, he started working as a postdoc at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, USA. In 2013 he moved to Chile as an ESO Fellow and from 2015 to 2020 has worked as a staff astronomer.

After some early (let's say uneven) attempts at astrophotography many years ago in the days of film cameras, his interest in astrophotography was rekindled by Chile's breathtaking night sky. Having worked at Paranal has offered Juan Carlos unique opportunities to pursue his exciting hobby in an unparalleled location. Despite having spent a few hundred nights there already, every sunset, sunrise or view of the Milky Way still felt like something new and unexpected for him. He hopes his pictures help others feel what it is like to look at the night sky from one of the darkest and most barren locations on Earth.