On May 25 and 26, 2024, Heritage Day was celebrated in Chile, which seeks to promote interaction with the diverse cultural expressions and historical resources that exist in the country. Las Campanas Observatory, LCO, was part of this great cultural activity, carrying out two activities in the Metropolitan Region.
The first was a discussion about the Manuel Foster Observatory and its contribution to astronomy in Chile. This observatory was installed on San Cristobal Hill (Santiago) in 1903 by the Lick Observatory of the University of California, in a period when most of the large-scale astronomical instruments were in the northern hemisphere.
The talk was held on May 25 at the Lo Contador Campus of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, with the participation of Daniela Bustamante, Director of the Altura Patrimonio Foundation; Simón Ángel, scientific director of the Foster Observatory; Nikolaus Vogt, academic of the Institute of Physics and Astronomy of the Universidad de Valparaíso; and Carol Rojas, in charge of Communications and Outreach of LCO. The event can be relived at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/live/6XgRqgwOdz0?si=ev8VObegWZTnv9zG
The next day, LCO was at the Cerro Calán Observatory Park (Las Condes), being one of the institutions invited by the Astronomy Department of the University of Chile. At the place, LCO had an inclusive stand about telescopes and objects and scales in the Solar System. The latter, thanks to material created by the Medellin Observatory in Colombia. During the day, 7600 people visited the site.