ALMA

High on the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes, the European Southern Observatory (ESO), together with its international partners, is building ALMA — a state-of-the-art telescope to study light from some of the coldest objects in the Universe. This light has wavelengths of around a millimetre, between infrared light and radio waves, and is therefore known as millimetre and submillimetre radiation.

Light at these wavelengths shines from vast cold clouds in interstellar space, at temperatures only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero, and from some of the earliest and most distant galaxies in the Universe. Astronomers can use it to study the chemical and physical conditions in molecular clouds — the dense regions of gas and dust where new stars are being born. Often these regions of the Universe are dark and obscured in visible light, but they shine brightly in the millimetre and submillimetre part of the spectrum.

Millimetre and submillimetre radiation opens a window into the enigmatic cold Universe, but the signals from space are heavily absorbed by water vapour in the Earth’s atmosphere. Telescopes for this kind of astronomy must be built on high, dry sites, such as the 5000-m high plateau at Chajnantor, site of the highest astronomical observatory on Earth.

Here, together with its international partners, ESO is building ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. This is the largest astronomical project in existence. The ALMA site, some 50 km east of San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile, is in one of the driest places on Earth. Astronomers find unsurpassed conditions for observing, but they must operate a frontier observatory under very difficult conditions. Chajnantor is more than 750 m higher than the observatories on Mauna Kea, and 2400 m higher than the VLT on Cerro Paranal.

ALMA will be a single telescope of revolutionary design, composed initially of 66 high-precision antennas, and operating at wavelengths of 0.3 to 9.6 mm. Its main 12-metre array will have fifty antennas, 12 metres in diameter, acting together as a single telescope — an interferometer. An additional compact array of four 12-metre and twelve 7-metre antennas will complement this. The antennas can be moved across the desert plateau over distances from 150 metres to 16 kilometres, which will give ALMA a powerful variable “zoom”. It will be able to probe the Universe at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, with a vision up to ten times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope, and complementing images made with the VLT Interferometer.

ALMA is the most powerful telescope for observing the cool Universe — molecular gas and dust as well as the relic radiation of the Big Bang. ALMA will study the building blocks of stars, planetary systems, galaxies and life itself. By providing scientists with detailed images of stars and planets being born in gas clouds near our Solar System, and detecting distant galaxies forming at the edge of the observable Universe, which we see as they were roughly ten billion years ago, it will let astronomers address some of the deepest questions of our cosmic origins.

ALMA’s construction will be completed around 2012, but early scientific observations with a partial array will begin around 2011.

The information of this article was extracted from ESO’s official website.

http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/alma/index.html

La Silla Observatory

The La Silla Observatory, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile and at an altitude of 2400 metres, has been an ESO stronghold since the 1960s. Here, ESO operates several of the most productive 4-metre class telescopes in the world.

The 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) broke new ground for telescope engineering and design and was the first in the world to have a computer-controlled main mirror (active optics), a technology developed at ESO and now applied to most of the world’s current large telescopes.

The ESO 3.6-metre telescope is now home to the world’s foremost extrasolar planet hunter: HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher), a spectrograph with unrivalled precision.

The La Silla Observatory is the first world-class observatory to have been granted certification for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001 Quality Management System. The infrastructure of La Silla is also used by many of the ESO member states for targeted projects such as the Swiss 1.2-metre Euler telescope, the Rapid-Eye Mount (REM) and TAROT gamma-ray burst chaser, as well as more common user facilities such as the 2.2-metre Max Planck and the 1.5-metre Danish telescopes. The 67-million pixel Wide Field Imager on the 2.2-metre telescope has taken many amazing images of celestial objects, some of which have now become icons in their own right.

With about 300 refereed publications attributable to the work of the observatory per year, La Silla remains at the forefront of astronomy. La Silla has led to an enormous number of scientific discoveries, including several “firsts”. The HARPS spectrograph is the undisputed champion at finding low-mass extrasolar planets. It detected the system around Gliese 581, which contains what may be the first known rocky planet in a habitable zone, outside the Solar System (eso0722). Several telescopes at La Silla played a crucial role in linking gamma-ray bursts — the most energetic explosions in the Universe since the Big Bang — with the explosions of massive stars. Since 1987, the ESO La Silla Observatory has also played an important role in the study and follow-up of the nearest recent supernova, SN 1987A.

The La Silla Observatory is located at the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert, one of the driest and loneliest areas of the world. Like other observatories in this geographical area, La Silla is located far from sources of light pollution and, like the Paranal Observatory, home to the Very Large Telescope, it has one of the darkest night skies on the Earth.

The information of this article was extracted from ESO’s official website.

http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/lasilla/index.html

Paranal Observatory (VLT)

The Very Large Telescope array (VLT) is the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy at the beginning of the third Millennium. It is the world’s most advanced optical instrument, consisting of four Unit Telescopes with main mirrors of 8.2m diameter and four movable 1.8m diameter Auxiliary Telescopes. The telescopes can work together, in groups of two or three, to form a giant ‘interferometer’, the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer, allowing astronomers to see details up to 25 times finer than with the individual telescopes. The light beams are combined in the VLTI using a complex system of mirrors in underground tunnels where the light paths must be kept equal to distances less than 1/1000 mm over a hundred metres. With this kind of precision the VLTI can reconstruct images with an angular resolution of milliarcseconds, equivalent to distinguishing the two headlights of a car at the distance of the Moon.

The 8.2m diameter Unit Telescopes can also be used individually. With one such telescope, images of celestial objects as faint as magnitude 30 can be obtained in a one-hour exposure. This corresponds to seeing objects that are four billion (four thousand million) times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye.

The large telescopes are named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun.

The information of this article was extracted from ESO’s official website.

http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/vlt/index.html

Collowara Observatory

Name: From Aymara language Qullo means Hill and Wara means Star.

Location: Hill El Churqui, in the southeast part of Andacollo, at an altitude of 1.300 mts above the sea level. 59 km southeast from the city of La Serena.

Description: This observation center was inaugurated in 2004 and has three observation terraces, from where you can see the stunning world-class scientific observatories Tololo, Gemini and a privileged view of the natural environment.

Equipment: 14″ GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain; Dobsonian 16″ y Schmidt-newtonian 10″.

Note: The tour is subject to weather conditions.

If you want to visit the Pangue Observatory please click here.

Mamalluca Observatory

Name:The name is taken from the same mountain where it is placed the observatory, the Cerro Mamalluca. In Quechua language  Wamakk or Wama means “strange thing, or uncommon thing” and lluchka means “blurry”.

Location: 9 km northeast from the city of Vicuña at 1.100 meters above the sea level. It is 71 to the east of La Serena.

Description: Everything started in 1995 as a new school project that took shape and that finally opened in 1998 thanks to the contributions of the National Foundation for Art and Culture (FONDART), the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, which donated the telescope, the company Capel and the city of Vicuña.

Equipment: Four 16″ telescopes, three 12″ telescopes and a 12″ Meade telescope LX200.

If you want to visit the Mamalluca Observatory please click here.

Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory

The most famous astronomical center of all Chile, located, in the Aymara language, at the “edge of abyss.” When you see the vast landscape that opens up from an elevation of 2.200 meters, revealing the valley and its most hidden corners, you will see how the name gains meaning. The view is priceless. Leer mas

Pangue Observatory

Name: The observatory takes the name from the property where it is placed, the farm El Pangue.

Location: It is located 18 km to the south of the city of Vicuña, and 80 km to the east of the city of La Serena at 1500 mt above the sea level. The offices are in the city of Vicuña.

Description: Astronomica del Sur is a company related to the astronomy field: courses, colsuntancies, education, etc. This was the company behind the construction of the Mamalluca observatory and Pangue observatory is one of their new projects. Leer mas

Mayu Observatory

Name: Cerro Mayu Observatory. Mayu in the tongue of the Incas means “Milky Way”.

Location: Quebrada de Talca, 27 km East from the city of La Serena.

Description: This project started in 1969 with the creation of the Astronomy and Physics Academy of the observatory of the Seminario Conciliar School, one of the most traditional schools of La Serena. In 1977 is inaugurated the Tololito Observatory, named that way after the famous scientific Observatory Cerro Tololo. Leer mas

Punta de Choros, Damas Island and La Silla Observatory

Punta de Choros / 3 days, 2 nights

Description:

An unforgettable experience you can enjoy in this 3 days trip in northern Chile. Cross the desert landscape to reach one of the most beautiful national reserves in Chile, the Humboldt Penguin National Reserve. Sail for its beautiful islands, and  see the natural habitat of countless species, amazing birds such as penguins in the driest desert of the world and impressive marine mammals like the intelligent dolphin, and enjoy the turquoise waters and white sands of  Damas Island. Finally visit a prestigious  scientific observatory responsible for important discoveries in the field of astronomy, the Observatory La Silla. Leer mas

Skies of the Elqui Valley

Elqui Valley / 3 days, 2 nights

Description:

Explore one of the most beautiful valleys of Chile, the Elqui Valley. Immerse yourself  in an adventure through the diverse and colorful landscapes of this valley. Enjoy  the peace of  its lands,  learn about the history of its towns and watch the outstanding show given by its clear  skies.  You will know about the process of production of the famous Chilean Pisco, you will enjoy a wonderful walk under the stars and you’ll be amazed with the breathtaking spectacle that will offer the tourist observatory Mamalluca. An experience cannot  miss. Leer mas

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