 | This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (January 2015)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
| |||||
| Decades: | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See also: | |||||
The following lists events that happened during 2009 in Chile.
| This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (January 2015)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
| |||||
| Decades: | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See also: | |||||
The following lists events that happened during 2009 in Chile.
The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is a facility operated by the European Southern Observatory, located on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It consists of four individual telescopes, each equipped with a primary mirror that measures 8.2 meters in diameter. These optical telescopes, named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal, and Yepun, are generally used separately but can be combined to achieve a very high angular resolution. The VLT array is also complemented by four movable Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) with 1.8-meter apertures.
The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 member states for ground-based astronomy. Created in 1962, ESO has provided astronomers with state-of-the-art research facilities and access to the southern sky. The organisation employs over 750 staff members and receives annual member state contributions of approximately €162 million. Its observatories are located in northern Chile.
A Ritchey–Chrétien telescope is a specialized variant of the Cassegrain telescope that has a hyperbolic primary mirror and a hyperbolic secondary mirror designed to eliminate off-axis optical errors (coma). The RCT has a wider field of view free of optical errors compared to a more traditional reflecting telescope configuration. Since the mid 20th century, a majority of large professional research telescopes have been Ritchey–Chrétien configurations; some well-known examples are the Hubble Space Telescope, the Keck telescopes and the ESO Very Large Telescope.
The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) is a telescope located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is housed in an enclosure immediately adjacent to the four Very Large Telescope (VLT) Unit Telescopes on the summit of Cerro Paranal. The VST is a wide-field survey telescope with a field of view twice as broad as the full Moon. It is the largest telescope in the world designed to exclusively survey the sky in visible light.
The VISTA is a wide-field reflecting telescope with a 4.1 metre mirror, located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. It is operated by the European Southern Observatory and started science operations in December 2009. VISTA was conceived and developed by a consortium of universities in the United Kingdom led by Queen Mary University of London and became an in-kind contribution to ESO as part of the UK's accession agreement, with the subscription paid by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
Paranal Observatory is an astronomical observatory operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). It is located in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile on Cerro Paranal at 2,635 m (8,645 ft) altitude, 120 km (70 mi) south of Antofagasta. By total light-collecting area, it is the largest optical-infrared observatory in the Southern Hemisphere; worldwide, it is second to the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii.
Cerro Paranal is a mountain in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile and is the home of the Paranal Observatory. Prior to the construction of the observatory, the summit was a horizontal control point with an elevation of 2,664 m (8,740 ft); now it is 2,635 m (8,645 ft) above sea level. It is the site of the Very Large Telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope. It is located 120 km (75 mi) south of Antofagasta and 80 km (50 mi) north of Taltal, as well as 15 km (9.3 mi) inland and 5 km (3.1 mi) west of highway B-710.
The Royal Observatory, Edinburgh (ROE) is an astronomical institution located on Blackford Hill in Edinburgh. The site is owned by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The ROE comprises the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) of STFC, the Institute for Astronomy of the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Edinburgh, and the ROE Visitor Centre.
Valentin D. Ivanov is a Bulgarian astronomer working in the European Southern Observatory, mainly at the Paranal site. Among his primary research areas are the dynamics of star clusters, formation of stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets around such objects.
ESO Hotel at Cerro Paranal is the accommodation for Paranal Observatory in Chile since 2002. It is mainly used for the ESO scientists and engineers who work there on a roster system. It has been called a "boarding house on Mars", because the desert surroundings are Mars-like, and an "Oasis for astronomers". It is not a commercial hotel, and the public cannot book rooms.
The Geneva Observatory is an astronomical observatory at Sauverny (CH) in the municipality of Versoix, Canton of Geneva, in Switzerland. It shares its buildings with the astronomy department of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. It has been active in discovering exoplanets, in stellar photometry, modelling stellar evolution, and has been involved in the European Space Agency's Hipparcos, INTEGRAL, Gaia, and Planck missions.
Taltal is a Chilean commune and city in Antofagasta Province, Antofagasta Region. According to the 2012 census, the commune has a population of 11,132 and has an area of 20,405.1 km2 (7,878 sq mi). The commune is home to Paranal Observatory and includes the northern portion of Pan de Azúcar National Park.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array or CTA is a multinational, worldwide project to build a new generation of ground-based gamma-ray instrument in the energy range extending from some tens of GeV to about 300 TeV. It is proposed as an open observatory and will consist of two arrays of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs), a first array at the Northern Hemisphere with emphasis on the study of extragalactic objects at the lowest possible energies, and a second array at the Southern Hemisphere, which is to cover the full energy range and concentrate on galactic sources. The physics program of CTA goes beyond high energy astrophysics into cosmology and fundamental physics.
The VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey (VVDS) is a redshift survey carried out by a collaboration between French and Italian astronomical institutes using the VIMOS spectrograph, mounted on the telescope Melipal (UT3) of the Very Large Telescope, located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
Cerro Armazones is a mountain located in the Sierra Vicuña Mackenna of the Chilean Coast Range, approximately 130 km (81 mi) south-east of Antofagasta in the Antofagasta Region, Chile. Before construction started on the European Extremely Large Telescope, the summit was a horizontal control point with an elevation of 3,064 metres (10,052 ft). The new elevation is 3,046 m (9,993 ft). It is located in a privileged zone for optical astronomy because it has 89% cloudless nights a year. It currently hosts the 1.5 m (5 ft) Hexapod-Telescope and other telescopes at the Cerro Armazones Observatory.
VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea –TheVVV Survey– is observing the Milky Way's bulge and southern disk in the near-infrared using the capabilities of the VISTA Telescope at Paranal, Chile.
The Precision Integrated-Optics Near-infrared Imaging ExpeRiment (PIONIER) is a visiting instrument at the ESO's Paranal Observatory, part of the VLTI astronomical observatory. It combines the light from four telescopes simultaneously and provide 0.002 arc seconds of angular resolution, the equivalent angular resolution of a 100 m telescope.
The Visible Multi-Object Spectrograph (VIMOS) is a wide field imager and a multi-object spectrograph installed at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT), in Chile. The instrument used for deep astronomical surveys delivers visible images and spectra of up to 1,000 galaxies at a time. VIMOS images four rectangular areas of the sky, 7 by 8 arcminutes each, with gaps of 2 arcminutes between them. Its principal investigator was Olivier Le Fèvre.
SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) is a project consisting of SPECULOOS Southern Observatory (SSO) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile and SPECULOOS Northern Observatory (SNO) at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife.
