Pasadena, CA— New work from an international team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Gregory Walth improves our understanding of the most-distant known astrophysical object— GN-z11, a galaxy 13.4 billion light-years from Earth. Formed 400 million years after the Big Bang, GN-z11 was previously determined by space telescope data to be the most-distant object yet discovered. In…
Dear LCO community, We regret to inform you that COVID-19 cases in Chile have reached a level where we need to reduce our staffing on Las Campanas and return to operating just a single Magellan telescope. Beginning January 26, 2021, only the Baade telescope will remain operational. We anticipate that the Clay telescope will be closed until at…
Last December 14, a solar eclipse was observed in continental Chile, whose total band covered the regions of La Araucanía, Los Ríos and Biobío (Mocha Island). To transmit it to the world from the south of the country, Las Campanas Observatory, together with the Carnegie Institution for Science and the Institute of Astrophysics at Pontificia…
Dear all, Due to the infection rate in the region remains low, we have decided to move from phase C1 to C2 of the reopening of Las Campanas Observatory. This determination is governed by the official indicators defined in the government’s “Step by Step” plans and the analysis of the current conditions in the regions…
Pasadena, CA— The Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s fifth generation collected its very first observations of the cosmos at 1:47 a.m. MDT on October 24, 2020. This groundbreaking all-sky survey will bolster our understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies—including our own Milky Way—and the supermassive black holes that lurk at their centers. The newly-launched…
Dear LCO collaborators, Given the continuous improvement of sanitary conditions in the Region, and considering the minimal restart of observations in Magellan / Clay, it is a pleasure to announce that the Las Campanas Observatory goes from Phase B to Phase C1 on Tuesday 6, 2020. For more details on Phase C1, please refer to…
In Chile, the start of the COVID 19 pandemic was in March 2020. Considering the possible impact on the health of our collaborators and visitors that this pandemic could have, the Las Campanas Observatory closed its operations on March 18 of this year. Since then, multiple efforts have been made to contain the spread of…
Dear LCO collaborators, There is light at the end of the tunnel! Literally said, we soon return to the light of the stars. In practice, we go from phase A to phase B (see definition of phases on the LCO website). For this return to be brilliant, we will have to put a lot of…
Dear LCO community, We are happy to report that the covid case numbers have been falling in the La Serena area and the region has exited quarantine today. Given this positive development, we are able to slightly increase the number of employees at Las Campanas. Starting tomorrow, we will begin to cool down instruments on…
An international group of astronomers has used the ALMA observatory to obtain an inventory of molecular gas and dust in distant galaxies at unprecedented depth in the iconic Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (H-UDF), one of the best-studied regions of the sky. The final results are being presented in a series of papers in the Astrophysical Journal.…
