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

SOAR Observatory

This observatory shares the summit of the Cerro Pachon (mountain), with the Gemini South observatory. The mirror of the telescope, only 10 cm. thick, possesses advanced technology that  provides the lens with the ability to adjust  its shape according to weather conditions, through electromagnetic actuators, providing a picture of a quality far superior to conventional mirrors. Leer mas

Gemini Observatory

Near the Cerro Tololo Observatory and at 2,700 meters above the sea level are the Gemini Center, another giant in astronomy that has Chile. It is an international cooperative project involving the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. Its objective is the operation of two telescopes of 8.1 meters, one on the Cerro Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA, and the other on Cerro Pachon, in the IV Region of Chile. Both are designed to produce high quality images of the universe, of course, thanks to the excellent weather conditions there. Leer mas

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

Astronomic Route

The trip begins at 8 o’clock in the morning, when the classic morning mist gives way to one of the clearest skies in the world: the ones of the Elqui Valley. This are the amazing skies we will discover along our route.

Our first stop is located 55 miles southeast from La Serena at 2.200 meters above sea level in the Elqui province, a real monument to Astronomy: the Observatory Cerro Tololo.

The most famous astronomic center is, according to the Aymara language, at “the edge of the abyss”. This is the meaning of its name, one that gets full of sense once you reach the top. From up there you can observe the infinite landscape of the valley and the mountains.

In the observatory a specialized guide will show us the facilities, huge domes where the telescopes that permit the astronomical research are kept. We will know the telescopes and the way they work, as we learn also about the origin of the universe.

Every year more than a hundred visitors and students from more than 50 institutions in the world travel to this place to develop astronomic researches. The main reason why we cannot visit this observatory at night and make observations is because this instruments are always being used by professionals. In spite of that the landscapes, the interesting talks and the close view we ca get of this professionals telescopes make the visit worthwhile.

After the visit to Tololo, we go to the Solar Stoves restaurant located in little town of Villaseca. Here all the food is prepared, as the name indicates, with solar energy captured by this special stoves.

Now is time for us to go deep in the valley to the towns near the cordillera: Pisco Elqui and Montegrande, where we can enjoy the sun and take a walk for their lovely streets. Then we’ll go to Vicuña, the main city of the valley and birthplace of our great poet, Nobel prize winner, Gabriela Mistral.

At dusk, we’ll gonna make our last visit, the most spectacular of our trip: the observation of the Elqui stars in a tourist observatory. Here we can make use of the astronomical observation equipment and enjoy of good talks about the universe from real experts in this matter. Just the perfect end for a day dedicated to enjoy the gifts of our skies.

Included:

• Trasfer
• Guide
• Lunch at Cocinas Solares restaurant
• Ticket Tourist Observatory

Note: Tour subject to weather conditions.

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