Astrophysicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a halo of abundant dark mass around the dwarf galaxy Tucana II, one of the most primitive in the universe, which has led them to conclude that the first galaxies were probably more massive than previously thought. The Magellan telescopes of Las Campanas Observatory were…
This process, before the first billion years of the Universe. One of the principal researchers is Dr. Leopoldo Infante, Director of Las Campanas Observatory, LCO. When the universe was about 350 million years old it was dark: there were no stars or galaxies, only neutral gas—mainly hydrogen—the residue of the Big Bang. That foggy period…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
The enigmatic variations of light in a binary system, located in Sagittarius constellation, could be explained by the presence of a variable gas disk around a hot star that revolves around a cooler star. These are the conclusions published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and which brought by researchers from Chile, Serbia and Poland.…
When a star passes too close to a supermassive black hole, tidal forces tear it apart, producing a bright flare of radiation as material from the star falls into the black hole. Astronomers study the light from these “tidal disruption events” (TDEs) for clues to the feeding behavior of the supermassive black holes lurking at…
On Thursday, August 13, Las Campanas Observatory’s cycle of online talks began, which will feature top-level speakers, all of whom are part of the observatory’s staff. These talks will deal with various topics related to astronomy, technology, engineering and daily life at LCO. All the talks will be transmitted live through the Youtube channel of…
In August, the ten-episode online series began, broadcast live on popular digital platforms, with a Chilean sign language interpreter. Through “Stories of Inclusive Astronomy,” different specialists and professionals in the field of science and astronomy, teachers, students, and people with disabilities will tell their experiences promoting Inclusive Astronomy in Chile and the world. The connected…
