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The 13 Hours set up its cameras on Friday August 19 at the Pic du Midi observatory, an exceptional playground for budding astronomers and for scientists. It is also to finance research that the observatory offers visitors to spend a night there.
In the heart of the Pyrenees, the day is coming to an end for the Pic du Midi observatory. The time has come for hundreds of visitors to leave. At the same time, below, Lydie and Jean-Paul Monamy begin their ascent. For their thirty years of marriage, this couple from the Jura is preparing to experience an exceptional night, at an altitude of 3,000 meters, as close as possible to the stars in the sky. At their side that evening, around thirty privileged people will spend the night with the observatory just for them.
The setting sun gives way in the sky to a spectacle of which only the night has the secret. For the group and their guide, the observation is done in red light, without light pollution. On the program: observation of the stars, the eye in the telescope. For more than a century, the Pic du Midi observatory has been a place of research. Threatened with extinction 30 years ago, it now welcomes more than 140,000 visitors each year.