Friday, 25 October 2019
The skies in the coastal range of northern Chile have arguably the best "seeing" in the world for optical astronomy. Originally, we were supposed to visit four professional observatories, but the civil unrest that broke out a few days before we started had almost everything closed - not because the observatories were sites of demonstrations, but because the staff had great difficulty getting to the sites.
The one observatory we did get to see was the construction site for the LSST on Cerro Pachón. This large (8.4 m) optical telescope is designed for a very specific job: to survey the entire sky every three days for 10 years - 18 TB of data every night, with real-time data analysis. It is scheduled to be fully operational in 2021 or 2022.
The skies in the coastal range of northern Chile have arguably the best "seeing" in the world for optical astronomy. Originally, we were supposed to visit four professional observatories, but the civil unrest that broke out a few days before we started had almost everything closed - not because the observatories were sites of demonstrations, but because the staff had great difficulty getting to the sites.
The one observatory we did get to see was the construction site for the LSST on Cerro Pachón. This large (8.4 m) optical telescope is designed for a very specific job: to survey the entire sky every three days for 10 years - 18 TB of data every night, with real-time data analysis. It is scheduled to be fully operational in 2021 or 2022.
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| The LSST is on Cerro Pachón, along with a couple of other telescopes. Cerro Tololo is the first site for modern telescopes in South America, having been developed by a consortium of US universities and the National Science Foundation in the 1960s. |
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| This sign may have overstated the slope, but there were some steep climbs and downhills on the road. |
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| The desert in these mountains is severe and bleak. This photo shows the telescopes atop Cerro Pachón. The LSST is the large white and blue structure on the right. |
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| Another view of Cerro Pachón. This time from Vista Sidney Wolff, where the road splits to go to either Cerro Tololo or Cerro Pachón. |
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| Cerro Tololo as seen from the LSST site. |
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| Our first view of the LSST. |
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| The coating chamber where mirror maintenance will be performed. |
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| The strutcure that will support the mirror, which will be directly above where everyone is standing. |
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| Outside the dome-to-be. The rotation of the dome structure was being tested while we were there. |
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| Sidney &Richard Wolff, along with our guides from the LSST staff (Victor, Jacques, and Giovanni). |
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| Our tour bus shows that the area is every bit as dusty as it looks. |
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| We had a late picnic lunch back at the guard house after we completed our tour. The bus took a lot longer to travel the 50 km from the guard house to the LSST site than a smaller vehicle does, so our "lunch" had to wait until 4 PM. |
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