TheCerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) is anastronomicalobservatory located on the summit of Mt. Cerro Tololo in theCoquimbo Region of northernChile, with additional facilities located on Mt.Cerro Pachón about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) to the southeast. It is approximately 80 kilometres (50 mi) east ofLa Serena, where support facilities are located. The principal telescopes at CTIO are the 4 mVíctor M. Blanco Telescope, named after Puerto Rican astronomerVíctor Manuel Blanco, and the 4.1 mSouthern Astrophysical Research Telescope, which is situated on Cerro Pachón.[1] Other telescopes on Cerro Tololo include the 1.5 m, 1.3 m, 1.0 m, and 0.9 m telescopes operated by the SMARTS consortium. CTIO also hosts other research projects, such asPROMPT, WHAM, andLCOGTN, providing a platform for access to the southern hemisphere for U.S. and worldwide scientific research.[2]
The site for the Inter-American Observatory on Mt. Cerro Tololo was identified by a team of scientists fromChile and theUnited States in 1959, and it was selected in 1962.[5][6] Construction began in 1963 with Stock as the first director, and regular astronomical observations commenced in 1965.[7]
In 1974, construction of large buildings on Cerro Tololo ended with the completion of the Víctor Blanco Telescope, but smaller facilities have been built since then.[citation needed] Cerro Pachón is still under development, with two large telescopes (Gemini South and SOAR) inaugurated since 2000, and one in the final stages of construction as of 2023 (theVera C. Rubin Observatory)[citation needed]
The Small and Medium Research Telescope System (SMARTS) is a consortium formed in 2001 after NOAO, the predecessor to NOIRLab, announced it would no longer support anything smaller than two meters at CTIO.[10] The member institutions of SMARTS now fund and manage observing time on four telescopes that fit that definition. Access has also been purchased by individual scientists.[11] SMARTS contracts with NOIRLab to maintain the telescopes it controls at CTIO, and NOIRLab retains the right to 25% of the observing time, and Chilean scientists retain 10%. SMARTS began managing telescopes in 2003.[10]
CTIOPI is the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory Parallax Investigation. It began in 1999 and uses two telescopes at Cerro Tololo, the SMARTS 1.5 m reflector and the SMARTS 0.9 m reflector. The purpose of CTIOPI is to discover nearby red, white, and brown dwarfs that lurk unidentified in the solar neighborhood. The goal is to discover 300 new southern star systems within 25 parsecs by determining trigonometric parallaxes accurate to 3 milliarcseconds.
From left to right: the UBC Southern Observatory, the SMARTS 1.0-meter Telescope, the Curtis Schmidt Telescope, the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, the SMARTS 1.5-meter Telescope and the SMARTS 0.9-meter Telescope
The 0.6 m (24 in) Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA) South Telescope is a reflecting telescope built byBoller and Chivens. Installed in 1968 for theInternational Planetary Patrol Program, it was owned and operated by Lowell Observatory. At some point control shift to CTIO, which lasted until 1996, after which Lowell used the telescope intermittently.[20] It was refurbished by SARA and put back into use in 2010.[21] Observing time is shared between the members of the SARA consortium.30°10′19.72″S70°47′57.13″W / 30.1721444°S 70.7992028°W /-30.1721444; -70.7992028
The Southern H-Alpha Sky Survey Atlas (SHASSA) operated at CTIO from 1997 to 2006 in its own small dome, which was dubbedEl Enano ('the Dwarf') by the local staff.[40][41] It was removed at the end of the project and donated to a school in La Serena.[42]
On the morning of Saturday, December 7, 2013, Luis González, a research assistant at theUniversity of Chile, discovered what would later be confirmed as a supernova by José Maza, an astronomer at University of Chile and a researcher for CATA (Centro de Astrofísica y Tecnologías Afines or “Centre for Astrophysics and Related Technologies”). The supernova is the first discovery to be made by the CATA 500, arobotic telescope designed and operated by a Chilean team located inSantiago, approximately 500 kilometres to the south.[46] It is part of the GLORIA project, which provides open access to astronomers from around the world to a network of remotely operated robotic telescopes.[47]The new supernova lies in the galaxy ESO 365-G16, located 370 million light years from Earth, and has a mass eight times that of the Sun.[48]
Gomez's Hamburger, believed to be a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk, was discovered in 1985 on sky photographs obtained by Arturo Gomez, support technical staff at the Observatory.[49]
A program of NOIRLab has published a mammoth survey of the galactic plane of the Milky Way.
^Moreno, H. (1990). "Chilean Astronomers and the Birth of Cerro Tololo".Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica.21: 683.Bibcode:1990RMxAA..21..683M.
^Goldberg, L. (1976). "Kitt Peak National Observatory, Tucson, Arizona; Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, La Serena, Chile. Observatory reports".Bulletin of the Astronomical Society.8: 129.Bibcode:1976BAAS....8..129G.
^Goldberg, L.; Blanco, V. (1978). "Kitt Peak National Observatory, Tucson, Arizona; Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, La Serena, Chile. Reports".Bulletin of the Astronomical Society.10: 152.Bibcode:1978BAAS...10..152G.
^Mayall, N. U. (1969). "Kitt Peak National Observatory, Tucson, Arizona and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, La Serena, Chile. Report 1968-1969".Bulletin of the Astronomical Society.1: 298.Bibcode:1969BAAS....1..298M.
^"2MASS - Telescopes". The University of Massachusetts Amherst Astronomy Department. Archived fromthe original on 2011-03-10. Retrieved2012-02-01.
^Lippincott, S. L.; Heintz, W. D. (1975). "Sproul Observatory, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Observatory report".Bulletin of the Astronomical Society.7: 106.Bibcode:1975BAAS....7..106L.
^abMayall, N. U. (1968). "Facilities for Visitors at Kitt Peak National Observatory and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory".Zeitschrift für Astrophysik.68: 222.Bibcode:1968ZA.....68..222M.
^Kim, Seung-Lee; et al. (15 September 2011), Shaklan, Stuart (ed.), "Wide-field telescope design for the KMTNet project",Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets V. SPIE Conference Proceedings, Techniques and Instrumentation for Detection of Exoplanets V,8151: 81511B,Bibcode:2011SPIE.8151E..1BK,doi:10.1117/12.894212,S2CID121856137
^Zacharias, M. I.; Zacharias, N. (2003). "The U. S. Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog project".Astronomy in Latin America.1 (1): 109.Bibcode:2003ala..conf..109Z.
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