Last March 23, 2024, close to a thousand people visited the offices of Las Campanas Observatory (LCO) in La Serena to celebrate Astronomy Day in Chile. This event was organized by LCO, with the collaboration of the Universidad Central, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMTO), the Fundación Cielos de Chile, the Navegantes Estelares project and NothOptics.…
Chile is known worldwide for the quality of its dark skies, which, being located over the Atacama Desert, the most arid non-polar place on the planet, remain clear and stable. For this reason, it is currently an astronomical power due to the fact that nearly 40% of the infrastructure created to study the Universe is…
Carnegie Science’s Mount Wilson Observatory is renowned for groundbreaking discoveries that reshaped our understanding of the cosmos. Yet, amidst the towering telescopes and the celebrated names of male astronomers like George Ellery Hale and Edwin Hubble, there exists a lesser known, but equally important narrative—that of the women of Mount Wilson’s Computing Division, who worked…
The Solar System has some new lunar members—the first new moon of Uranus discovered in more than 20 years, and likely the smallest, as well as two new moons of Neptune, one of which is the faintest moon ever discovered by ground-based telescopes. The discoveries were announced today by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet…
On January 6, 2024, after an intense year of work, the Navegantes Estelares project was launched, which includes a permanent totem with images and astronomical information inside the Monumental Lighthouse of La Serena, located in the Coquimbo Region (Chile), as well as infographics with content about astronomy in Chile, and occasional projections on the facade…
With the purpose of promoting interest in research, three students from Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, UAI, winners as the best projects of the Workshop on Directed Research (TID), visited the Las Campanas Observatory, LCO. Josefina Parada, Edel Fernández and Jorge Petit-Laurent were received by the Director of LCO, Leopoldo Infante, who told them about the history…
On December 12 and 13, “Congreso Futuro en tu Comuna” was held in the Atacama Region, a scientific-cultural event that brings together people of all ages and whose purpose is to disseminate and teach about science through experiments, exhibitions and lectures. For the first time, Las Campanas Observatory was part of this event, participating together…
With the telescopes currently under construction, Chile will reach about 70% of the world’s astronomical capacity for earth observation by the end of this decade. However, despite being an astronomical paradise, the origins of this important activity in Chile have been forgotten. The documentary “Navegantes del Tiempo” seeks to rescue the history of the first…
Astronomers at the University of Toronto have discovered a population of massive stars that have been stripped of their hydrogen envelopes by their companions in binary systems. The findings, published today in Science, shed light on the hot helium stars that are believed to be the origins of hydrogen-poor core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers.…
A river of hydrogen gas flows from the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies located on the outskirts of the Milky Way. The contents of this river, called the Magellanic Stream, have puzzled astronomers for decades. But now, for the first time, a team of researchers has been able to locate stars within…
