Las Campanas Observatory Explained

Las Campanas Observatory (LCO) is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS). It is in the southern Atacama Desert of Chile in the Atacama Region approximately 100km (100miles) northeast of the city of La Serena. The LCO telescopes and other facilities are near the north end of a 7km (04miles) long mountain ridge. Cerro Las Campanas, near the southern end and over 2500m (8,200feet) high, is the future home of the Giant Magellan Telescope.

LCO was established in 1969 and is the primary observing facility of CIS. It supplanted Mount Wilson Observatory in that role due to increasing light pollution in the Los Angeles area. The headquarters of Carnegie Observatories is located in Pasadena, California, while the main office in Chile is in La Serena next to the University of La Serena and a short distance from the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy facility.

It is served by Pelicano Airport, to the southwest.

Telescopes

Tenant telescopes

Former telescopes

Future telescopes

Discoveries

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

On August 17, 2017 at LCO, SSS17a, the optical counterpart to the gravitational wave source GW170817, was discovered with the Swope telescope.[5]

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. 1711.03234. SDSS-V: pioneering panoptic spectroscopy. 2017. Kollmeier. Juna A.. Zasowski. Gail. Rix. Hans-Walter. Johns. Matt. Anderson. Scott F.. Drory. Niv. Johnson. Jennifer A.. Pogge. Richard W.. Bird. Jonathan C.. Blanc. Guillermo A.. Brownstein. Joel R.. Crane. Jeffrey D.. De Lee. Nathan M.. Klaene. Mark A.. Kreckel. Kathryn. MacDonald. Nick. Merloni. Andrea. Ness. Melissa K.. O'Brien. Thomas. Sanchez-Gallego. Jose R.. Sayres. Conor C.. Shen. Yue. Thakar. Ani R.. Tkachenko. Andrew. Aerts. Conny. Blanton. Michael R.. Eisenstein. Daniel J.. Holtzman. Jon A.. Maoz. Dan. Nandra. Kirpal. astro-ph.GA. 29.
  2. SDSS-V Pioneering panoptic spectroscopy. 2020. Bulletin of the AAS. 51. 7.
  3. Book: T.. Herbst. Pavaman. Bilgi. Heather K. Marshall. Jason. Spyromilio. Tomonori. Usuda. Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes VIII. The SDSS-V local volume mapper telescope system. 2020. 10.1117/12.2561419 . SPIE. 114450J. 11445. 9781510636774. 230583048.
  4. The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization Breaks Ground in Chile . 11 November 2015 . GMTO Corporation .
  5. Coulter. D. A.. Foley. R. J.. Kilpatrick. C. D.. Drout. M. R.. Piro. A. L.. Shappee. B. J.. Siebert. M. R.. Simon. J. D.. Ulloa. N.. 2017-10-16. Swope Supernova Survey 2017a (SSS17a), the optical counterpart to a gravitational wave source. Science. 358. 6370. en. 1556–1558. 10.1126/science.aap9811. 29038368. 0036-8075. 1710.05452. 2017Sci...358.1556C. 206664790.