Las Campanas Observatory, part of the Carnegie Institution for Science, celebrates 50 years in October since the first light of its first telescope, which began operating in Chile in 1971. Since then, the Carnegie science team has been at the forefront of research on cosmology, galaxy formation and evolution, the chemical evolution of stars and…
An international group of researchers, including astronomers from the Universidad Católica del Norte have conducted the first investigation of the chemical properties of the ancient globular cluster Tonantzintla 1, also known as NGC 6380. The researchers worked with data obtained with the Irénée du Pont telescope at Las Campanas Observatory. Globular clusters are symmetric, compact…
Dear LCO community, While the number of COVID-19 cases in Chile continues to drop, travel restrictions for non-Chilean residents remain in place. For this reason, we are cancelling the M2FS and MagAOX PI instrument runs scheduled in the 2021B semester. In addition, all Magellan observations will be taken only in remote mode for the…
Due to ongoing infrastructure renovations, the duPont telescope will remain without nighttime operations through at least the end of September 2021. Activities include a complete renovation of the former Coude room to a new two story lab and instrument storage facility, relocation of the control room to the former library on the first floor, installations…
The initiative called “CRISTAL” will have nearly 150 hours and seeks to reveal what some of the most distant and earliest known galaxies are like and how they evolved into those seen in the local universe. The ALMA observatory awarded nearly 150 hours of observing time to the CRISTAL project, the first Chilean-led initiative to…
A Carnegie-led survey of exoplanet candidates identified by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanets Satellite Survey (TESS) is laying the groundwork to help astronomers understand how the Milky Way’s most common planets formed and evolved, and determine why our Solar System’s pattern of planetary orbits and sizes is so unusual. The survey is using TESS data and observations…
During sunrise on July 18-19, 2021, from the Baade telescope at Carnegie Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory, Peter Senchyna (Carnegie Observatories postdoctoral researcher) and Bryce Bolin (from Caltech) observed asteroid 2020AV2. This asteroid, discovered in 2020, is the only one known to revolve around the Sun in an orbit smaller than the orbit of…
At the observatory located in the Atacama region, Minister Couve learned about the initiatives to advance in the operations phase at this stage of the pandemic and the state of construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), which will become one of the largest telescopes in the world. As part of a territorial deployment in…
Dear LCO Community, We are happy to report that the Covid-19 situation in Chile has improved significantly and we will return to night time operations with both Magellan telescopes on July 27, 2021. All observing will remain in remote-mode for the foreseeable future. Please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns. Best, John Mulchaey, Polo…
Las Campanas Observatory (LCO), of the Carnegie Institution for Science – a World-class International Scientific Organization, with a strong commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is seeking a: Chief Accountant & Budget Control Officer We require a bilingual (fluent oral and written Spanish / English, since as an International Organization with Headquarters in the United…
