Located 8,887 ft (2,709 m) above sea level, the wide Bure Plateau hosts in its foothills the state-of-the-art equipment of one of the largest observatories of the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM) in the world. The site was chosen because of the high quality of the sky, qualified by astronomers as a dark sky. The criteria that prevailed in this choice are environmental and meteorological: absence of light pollution, low humidity, and good weather. Buëch, Dévoluy and Queyras share these same conditions and play the scientific tourism card by multiplying the observatories (Baronnies Provençales Observatory, Château-Renard Observatory).