Las Campanas Observatory (LCO) is an

astronomical Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include ...

observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysics, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. Th ...

managed by the

Carnegie Institution for Science The Carnegie Institution for Science, also known as Carnegie Science and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is an organization established to fund and perform scientific research in the United States. This institution is headquartered in W ...

(CIS). Located in

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

's Atacama Region, it sits about northeast of the city of La Serena. The LCO's telescopes and facilities are positioned near the northern end of a mountain ridge. Cerro Las Campanas, situated near the southern end of this ridge and standing over tall, will be the future site of the Giant Magellan Telescope. Established in 1969, LCO is CIS's primary observatory, having taken over this role from

Mount Wilson Observatory The Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO) is an Observatory#Astronomical observatories, astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson (California), Mount Wilson, a peak in the San Gabrie ...

due to increasing light pollution in the

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

area. The headquarters of Carnegie Observatories is in

Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commerci ...

, while the main office in Chile is in La Serena, close to the University of La Serena and near the

Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) is a consortium of universities and other institutions that operates astronomical observatories and telescopes. Founded October 10, 1957, with the encouragement of the National Sc ...

facility. The observatory is served by Pelicano Airport, located to the southwest.

Telescopes

* The

Magellan Telescopes The Magellan Telescopes are a pair of optical telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The two telescopes are named after the astronomer Walter Baade and the philanthropist Landon T. Clay. First light for the telescopes was on ...

are two identical single-mirror reflecting telescopes. The Walter Baade Telescope saw first light in 2000, and the Landon Clay Telescope in 2002. They are managed by LCO for an international consortium of institutions which includes LCO. * The du Pont Telescope is named after industrialist Irénée du Pont and has been in operation since 1977. It is a Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with a Gascoigne corrector lens, and was built by Boller & Chivens and L&F Industries. * The Swope Telescope was the first telescope installed at LCO, and began operating in 1971. It is named after CIS astronomer Henrietta Swope. It is a Ritchey-Chrétien telescope built by Boller & Chivens with a Gascoigne corrector lens.

Tenant telescopes

* The Warsaw Telescope is the main instrument of the

Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) is a Polish astronomy, astronomical project based at the University of Warsaw that runs time-domain astronomy, a long-term variability sky survey (1992–present). The main goals are the detecti ...

operated by the

University of Warsaw The University of Warsaw (, ) is a public university, public research university in Warsaw, Poland. Established on November 19, 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country, offering 37 different fields of study as well ...

Observatory. Installed in 1996, it is a Ritchey-Chrétien design built by DFM Engineering. Exact location: ± 1 meter, altitude of the base of the building over mean sea level. * The All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) is a project to monitor the southern sky for

variable stars A variable star is a star whose brightness as seen from Earth (its apparent magnitude) changes systematically with time. This variation may be caused by a change in emitted light or by something partly blocking the light, so variable stars are ...

. It consists of two wide-field telescopes, one narrow field telescope, and one ultra-wide field telescope. A prototype system was installed in 1996 and a second in 1997, both in the same enclosure as the 10-inch astrograph. The three larger telescopes were installed in 2000. The ultra-wide device was added in 2002 when the existing telescopes were moved to a new, smaller enclosure. Location: ± 5 meter. * The Hungarian Automated Telescope South (HAT-South) facility is part of the

HATNet Project The Hungarian Automated Telescope Network (HATNet) project is a network of six small fully automated "HAT" telescopes. The scientific goal of the project is to detect and characterize extrasolar planets using the transit method. This network is us ...

to detect

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992 around a pulsar, and the first detection around a main-sequence star was in 1995. A different planet, first det ...

s using the

transit method Methods of detecting exoplanets usually rely on indirect strategies – that is, they do not directly image the planet but deduce its existence from another signal. Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For e ...

. It consists of a pair of four Takahasi reflecting

astrograph An astrograph (or astrographic camera) is a telescope designed for the sole purpose of astrophotography. Astrographs are mostly used in wide-field astronomical surveys of the sky and for detection of objects such as asteroids, meteors, an ...

s on a common mount. It was installed in 2009. * The

Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network The Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network (BiSON) consists of a network of six remote solar observatories monitoring low-degree Helioseismology, solar oscillation modes. It is operated by the High Resolution Optical Spectroscopy group of the Sch ...

(BiSON) operates at station at LCO. * The Local Volume Mapper of the SDSS-V consists of four telescopes (siderostats) each with 0.16 m diameter near .

Former telescopes

* The NANTEN millimeter-wavelength

radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized antenna (radio), antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the r ...

was located at LCO from 1995 to 2004. It is now located at the Pampa La Bola site of the

Llano de Chajnantor Observatory Llano de Chajnantor Observatory is the name for a group of astronomy, astronomical observatory, observatories located at an altitude of over 4,800 m (15,700 ft) in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. The site is in the Antofagasta Reg ...

and is known as the NANTEN2 Observatory. * The

Helen Sawyer Hogg Helen Battles Sawyer Hogg (August 1, 1905 – January 28, 1993) was an American-Canadian astronomer who pioneered research into globular clusters and variable stars. She was the first female president of several astronomical organizations and a ...

Telescope (HSHT) was operated at LCO by the University of Toronto Southern Observatory from 1971 to 1997. It is now located at Leoncito Astronomical Complex. * A astrograph operated at the site for some time, and was used to discover Supernova 1987A (

SN 1987A SN 1987A was a Type II supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It occurred approximately from Earth and was the closest observed supernova since Kepler's Supernova in 1604. Light and neutrinos ...

). * The Pi of the Sky project operated two wide-angle cameras that searched for the optical signature of gamma ray bursts at LCO starting in 2004. The installation was moved to a commercial telescope hosting site in

San Pedro de Atacama San Pedro de Atacama is a Chilean town and commune in El Loa Province, Antofagasta Region. It is located east of Antofagasta, some 106 km (60 mi) southeast of Calama and the Chuquicamata copper mine, overlooking the Licancabur volcan ...

in 2011.

Future telescopes

* The Giant Magellan Telescope is an

extremely large telescope The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is an astronomical observatory under construction. When completed, it will be the world's largest optical and near-infrared extremely large telescope. Part of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) agency, ...

under construction at LCO, with commissioning expected to begin in 2029. It is effective

aperture In optics, the aperture of an optical system (including a system consisting of a single lens) is the hole or opening that primarily limits light propagated through the system. More specifically, the entrance pupil as the front side image o ...

design with seven segments. The telescope will have a light-gathering area of , which is roughly fifteen times greater than one of the Magellan telescopes. The mirrors are being fabricated by the

Steward Observatory Steward Observatory is the research arm of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona (UArizona). Its offices are located on the UArizona campus in Tucson, Arizona (US). Established in 1916, the first telescope and building were ...

Mirror Laboratory, and the first was started in 2005.

Discoveries

On February 24, 1987 at LCO, Ian Shelton and Oscar Duhalde became the first official observers of Supernova 1987A (

). On August 17, 2017 at LCO,

SSS17a GW170817 was a gravitational wave (GW) observed by the LIGO and Virgo interferometer, Virgo detectors on 17 August 2017, originating within the shell elliptical galaxy NGC 4993, about 144 million light years away. The wave was produced by the la ...

, the optical counterpart to the gravitational wave source

GW170817 GW170817 was a gravitational wave (GW) observed by the LIGO and Virgo detectors on 17 August 2017, originating within the shell elliptical galaxy NGC 4993, about 144 million light years away. The wave was produced by the last moments of the in ...

, was discovered with the Swope telescope.

Gallery

File:Du Pont Las Campanas.jpg, du Pont telescope File:Warszawskie Obserwatorium Południowe.jpg, Warsaw telescope dome and control building File:Warszawskie Obserwatorium Południowe Teleskop.jpg, Warsaw telescope File:Clay telescope.jpg, Clay telescope (one of the Magellan telescopes) File:Magellan telescopes.jpg, Magellan telescopes File:Telescopio Polaco Las Campanas.jpg, Magellan telescopes, Warsaw and Swope telescopes (LTR) File:Teleskopy ASAS OGLE.jpg, ASAS telescopes File:BiSON Las Campanas Station.jpg, BiSON Solar Telescope

References

External links

The Carnegie Observatories

Carnegie Institution for Science
{{Authority control 1971 establishments in Chile Astronomical observatories in Chile Buildings and structures in Coquimbo Region