La Silla Observatory


La Silla Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Chile with three telescopes built and operated by the European Southern Observatory. Several other telescopes are located at the site and are partly maintained by ESO. The observatory is one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and was the first in Chile to be used by ESO.
The La Silla telescopes and instruments are located 150 km northeast of La Serena at the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert, one of the driest and most remote areas of the world. Like other observatories in this geographical area, La Silla is located far from sources of light pollution and, like the Paranal Observatory, home to the Very Large Telescope, it has one of the darkest night skies on the Earth.

History

Following the decision in 1963 to approve Chile as the site for the ESO observatory, scouting parties were sent to various locations to assess their suitability.
The site that was decided upon was La Silla in the southern part of the Atacama desert, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile and at an altitude of 2400 metres. Besides being government property, it had the added benefits of being in a dry, flat and easily accessible area, yet isolated and remote from any artificial light and dust sources. Originally named the Cinchado, it was renamed La Silla after its saddle-like shape. On October 30, 1964, the contracts were signed and an area of was purchased the following year. During 1965, temporary facilities were erected with living quarters, a workshop and storage area. The dedication ceremony of the road to the summit took place in March 1966, two months after completion of the road.
On 25 March 1969, the ESO site at La Silla was finally formally inaugurated by President Eduardo Frei Montalva. With a permanent base of dormitories, workshops, hotels and several functioning telescopes, the observatory was fully operational. The ESO 1.5-metre and ESO 1-metre telescopes had been erected in the late 1960s, and were joined in 1968 by the Gran Prismo Objectif telescope, which had previously been used in South Africa. These three telescopes can be seen in this order from right to left in the background of the image on the left from June 1968.
By 1976, the largest telescope planned, the, started operations. It was subsequently to have a 1.4m CAT attached. In 1984, the 2.2m telescope began operations, while in March 1989, the 3.5 m New Technology Telescope saw first light. The program reached its apex with the installation of the SEST in 1987, the only large submillimetre telescope in the southern hemisphere, which was a combined project between ESO and the Swedish Natural Science Research Council. Around the end of the century some of the original telescopes were closed: the 1m Schmidt closed in 1998 and the 1.5m in 2002, while new equipment owned by various foreign observatories was introduced. A 1-metre telescope owned by Marseille Observatory opened in 1998, followed by a 1.2-metre telescope from Geneva Observatory in 2000.

Telescopes

ESO operates three major optical and near infrared telescopes at the La Silla site: the New Technology Telescope, the 3.6-m ESO Telescope, and the 2.2-m Max-Planck-ESO Telescope. In addition La Silla hosts several other national and project telescopes such as the ESO 1-metre Schmidt Telescope, the 1.54-m Danish Telescope, the 1.2-m Leonhard Euler Telescope, the Rapid Eye Mount telescope, TRAPPIST and TAROT. These telescopes are not operated by ESO and hence do not fall under the responsibility of La Silla Science Operations.

ESO 3.6 m Telescope

This 3.6 m Cassegrain telescope started operations in 1976 and has been constantly upgraded since, including the installation of a new secondary mirror that has kept the telescope in its place as one of the most efficient and productive engines of astronomical research. The telescope hosts HARPS, the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, the world's foremost exoplanet hunter. HARPS is a spectrograph with unrivalled precision and is the most successful finder of low-mass exoplanets to date. Since April 2008, HARPS has been the only instrument available at the 3.6 m telescope.

New Technology Telescope

The ESO New Technology Telescope is an Alt-Az, 3.58-metre Richey-Chretien telescope which pioneered the use of active optics. The telescope and its enclosure had a revolutionary design for optimal image quality. NTT saw first light in March 1989. The telescope chamber is ventilated by a system of flaps which optimize the air flow across the NTT optimizing the dome and mirror seeing. To prevent heat input to the building, all motors in the telescope are water cooled and all the electronics boxes are insulated and cooled. The primary mirror of the NTT is actively controlled to preserve its figure at all telescope positions. The secondary mirror position is also actively controlled in three directions. The optimized airflow, the thermal controls, and the active optics give the excellent image quality of the NTT. Note that the NTT has active instead of adaptive optics: it corrects the defects and deformation of the telescope and mirror, but does not correct the turbulence; it ensures that the optics is always in perfect shape. Together with the thermal control, it allows the NTT to reach the ambient seeing, but it does not improve it.

MPG/ESO 2.2 m Telescope

The 2.2-metre telescope has been in operation at La Silla since early 1984, and is on indefinite loan to ESO from the Max Planck Society. Telescope time is shared between MPG and ESO observing programmes, while the operation and maintenance of the telescope are ESO's responsibility. However, due to a new agreement between the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and ESO, the instrument is operated by MPG until the end of September 2016. The telescope hosts three instruments: the 67-million pixel Wide Field Imager with a field of view as large as the full Moon, which has taken many amazing images of celestial objects; GROND, the Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector, which chases the afterglows of the most powerful explosions in the Universe, known as gamma-ray bursts; and the high-resolution spectrograph, FEROS, used to make detailed studies of stars. MPG's 2.2-metre telescope in La Silla also has a twin brother located at the Calar Alto Observatory in southern Spain.

Other telescopes

La Silla also hosts several national and project telescopes not operated by ESO. Among them are the Swiss Euler Telescope, the Danish National Telescope and the REM, TRAPPIST and TAROT telescopes.

ESO Schmidt telescope

Euler telescope

MASCARA

REM telescope

TAROT

Danish 1.54m Telescope

TRAPPIST

Former telescopes

The following telescopes have now been decommissioned:
The Swiss T70 telescope was a 70 cm aperture telescope for photometry that had a first light in 1980. It retired in 1998, when the Euler Telescope was commissioned. The Swiss T70 was a Cassegrain reflector design mounted on an Equatorial fork mount. It was equipped with a P7 Photometer, an replaced the Swiss 0.4-metre telescope, which was in use from November 1975 until March 1980. As with the Euler Telescope, the Swiss T70 and 0.4-metre telescopes were operated by the Geneva Observatory.

Scientific discoveries

About 300 scientific papers based on observations taken at La Silla are published each year. The HARPS spectrograph has found a large number of low-mass extrasolar planets. It detected the planets within the Gliese 581 planetary system, which contains what may be the first known rocky planet in a habitable zone, outside the Solar System. Several telescopes at La Silla played a crucial role in linking gamma-ray bursts—the most energetic explosions in the Universe since the Big Bang—with the explosions of massive stars. Since 1987, the ESO La Silla Observatory has also played an important role in the study and follow-up of the nearest recent supernova, SN 1987A.

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