SARA South at Cerro Tololo

Above the U.S. National Science Foundation Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Milky Way elegantly stretches into the night sky from the horizon, as yellow, green, and red airglow seemingly permeate what would otherwise be a black sky in this Image of the Week. CTIO is a Program of NSF NOIRLab and is home to approximately 40 telescopes from 11 tenant observatories and research projects. Featured here is one such facility: the SARA Cerro Tololo Telescope, operated by the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA). SARA is a collaborative partnership of American universities that operate telescopes at multiple locations around the world, including the Canary Islands and Arizona (where the SARA Kitt Peak Telescope is hosted at NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory, another Program of NSF NOIRLab). The variety of locations provides essential observing opportunities to students and faculty from participating institutions, but the location of the SARA Cerro Tololo Telescope in Chile gives it a capability that other SARA telescopes don’t have: full access to the southern sky. The SARA Cerro Tololo Telescope fills an essential gap for observers and observers-in-training to enable their exploration of the entirety of the night sky.