The world's largest telescope is going to be built in Chile

My uncle is an astronomer for NOAO and worked at the Blanco Telescope in Chile for a while. The things he'd talk about absolutely blew my mind, even if they were quite often miles above my head (heeyo).

One of my favorite observations of his teams' was when they found galaxies stealing stars from one another.

http://www.noao.edu/news/2011/pr1102.php

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/07/110720-galax...

Fun anecdote - his twin brother is also an astronomer. They're quite funny in the same room together, as they're... slightly competitive with their theoretical understandings.

Re: The world's largest telescope is going to be built in Chile

#7

Post by JonnieCache » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 9:43 PM UTC

Here's that telescope scale comparison in svg: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Comparis...

Re: The world's largest telescope is going to be built in Chile

#8

Post by te_platt » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

There's a nice panorama of the site here:

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/B-710,+Antofagasta,+Chile/An...

Looks like it's a couple of hours drive to the nearest city, Antofagasta. That will be a lonely stay for those working there. On the plus side they will probably average 364 nights a year of good viewing weather.

Re: The world's largest telescope is going to be built in Chile

#9

Post by kelseyhannan » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 10:12 PM UTC

te_platt wrote: post #8

There's a nice panorama of the site here: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/B-710,+Antofagasta,+Chile/An... Looks like it's a couple of hours drive to the nearest city, Antofagasta. That will be a lonely stay for those working there. On the plus side they will probably average 364 nights a year of good viewing weather.

My astronomy professor talked about that place. Apparently it has nice living facilities and lots of researchers there.

Far from being lonely, he glowingly described it as a place where young, attractive, incredibly intelligent & mostly single grad students get to come together to do astronomy research in between watching re-runs of Contact. This location is like an Olympic Village for astronomers; with this telescope, a mecca.

Re: The world's largest telescope is going to be built in Chile

#10

Post by MCRed » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 10:37 PM UTC

Chile is a wonderful country, generally very well run since Pinochet was deposed. They are developing world but they are really developing. The government runs a financial surplus and despite being really huge with an odd distribution of population (a huge percentage of the country lives in santiago) the infrastructure in remote parts is quite good. (Quite good on south american standards)

The country is running Startup Chile to build entrepreneurship, and has been pretty successful in jumpstarting a startup economy and culture.

I highly recommend if you get a chance to spend time in Chile, do so.