Press Releases: Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory

15 Febrero 2010: The groundbreaking for the viewpoint Vista Sidney Wolff took place on February 1, 2010. The vista is on the road to the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile and has a beautiful view of the SOAR and Gemini telescopes and also of the site selected for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The construction of the vista point is a tribute to Dr. Sidney C. Wolff’s leadership in enabling the construction of these world-class facilities on Cerro Pachón high in the Andes mountains. Dr. Wolff served as President of the SOAR Board and first Director of the Gemini Observatory. She is currently President of the LSST Corporation.

20 Agosto 2008: Dr. R. Chris Smith has been selected as the next director of Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). Smith will succeed Dr. Alistair Walker in November. Walker will return to the scientific staff of CTIO after five years as director.

14 Noviembre 2006: Astronomers have identified 20 new stellar systems in our local solar neighborhood, including the twenty-third and twenty-fourth closest stars to the Sun. When added to eight other systems announced by this team and six by other groups since 2000, the known population of the Milky Way galaxy within 33 light-years (10 parsecs) of Earth has grown by 16 percent in just the past six years.

1 Agosto 2006: As part of an ongoing search for Earth’s nearest stellar neighbors, astronomers have determined the distance to a stellar-like body known as DEN 0255-477 and discovered that it is the nearest-known L dwarf. This body is now also the faintest object outside our solar system for which its intrinsic visual brightness has been measured.

8 Marzo 2006: A dramatic new image of cometary globule CG4 marks the one-thousandth image posted to the online gallery hosted by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

9 Enero 2006: In a feat resembling an intergalactic autopsy, astronomers have used the Gemini South telescope in Chile to obtain a detailed spectrum of an echo of light from an ancient supernova that enables them to identify the original star’s cause of death.

9 Enero 2006: The glowing gas of the interstellar medium (ISM) is the breeding ground for the formation of new stars, and the cemetery where the ashes of dead stars ultimately return.

21 Diciembre 2005: A team of astronomers has found faint visible echoes of three ancient supernovae by detecting their centuries-old light as it is reflected by clouds of interstellar gas hundreds of light-years removed from the original explosions.

6 Diciembre 2005: More than half of the largest galaxies in the nearby universe have collided and merged with another galaxy in the past two billion years, according to a new study using hundreds of images from two of the deepest sky surveys ever conducted.

12 Septiembre 2005: Fulfilling one of its central operational goals in a big way, the SOuthern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR) on Cerro Pachón in Chile made the first observations of the glowing remains of the most distant explosion ever seen in the Universe. The international telescope then provided the first accurate measurement of just how incredibly far away this explosion appears to be.

30 Agosto 2005: A comprehensive survey of more than 4,000 elliptical and lenticular galaxies in 93 nearby galaxy clusters has found a curious case of galactic “downsizing.”

14 Noviembre 2003: Dr. Alistair Walker has been confirmed by the AURA Observatories Council as the new director of Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in La Serena, Chile.

6 Agosto 2003: Astronomers have finally identified the progenitor star system of a Type Ia supernova. The culprit that triggered the stellar explosion is a surprisingly normal star just a few times more massive than the Sun.

13 Enero 2003: A team of astronomers led by Matthew Holman (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and JJ Kavelaars (National Research Council of Canada) has discovered three previously unknown moons of Neptune. This boosts the number of known satellites of the gas giant to eleven. These moons are the first to be discovered orbiting Neptune since the Voyager II flyby in 1989, and the first discovered from a ground-based telescope since 1949.

8 Enero 2003: Astronomers have discovered a small body orbiting the Sun at the distance of Neptune whose orbit makes it the first known member of a long-sought population of objects known as Neptune Trojans.

8 Enero 2003: Astronomers have discovered dozens of potential stellar cocoons within the hostile environment of the Carina Nebula, including some oddballs with bulbous heads, irregular shapes and long, thin tails. Each of these objects may harbor disks of gas and dust that could one day form planetary systems.

15 Octubre 2002: An unobtrusive arc of blue stars stretching above the iconic galaxy Centaurus A represents the lingering signature of an episode of galactic cannibalism that is surprisingly recent and, astronomically speaking, quite nearby.

3 Junio 2002: Aided by the distorted shape of the stars in normally faint binary systems called Soft X-ray Transients, an astronomer at the University of California-San Diego has determined that two nearby black holes each have a mass no larger than a handful of stars like our Sun.

10 Enero 2002: A new color image of the nearby irregular galaxy NGC 6822 shows a myriad of hot blue massive stars and several famous nebulae in impressive detail.

13 Diciembre 2001: Astronomer Robert A. Schommer, one of the leading members of the scientific staff at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile and the director of the U.S. Gemini Program, died in Chile on December 12.