Magellan Telescopes, Astronomical observatory in La Higuera, Chile
The Magellan Telescopes are two Gregorian optical reflectors installed at Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Region of Chile, each with a primary mirror 6.5 meters across. The two instruments sit in separate domes and can point to the same region of the sky independently, allowing parallel observations of the southern hemisphere.
The first telescope, Baade, began operating in 2000, and the second, Clay, followed two years later. Both were built by a consortium of American universities led by the Carnegie Institution for Science and remain in active use today.
The two telescopes are named after astronomer Walter Baade and after Landon Clay, a patron of the Carnegie Institution. Visiting the site gives a sense of how international research teams work together in one of the most remote and dry places on Earth.
The site sits at high elevation where the air is noticeably thinner than at sea level, so visitors should give themselves time to adjust before walking around. Warm layers are a good idea, as temperatures can drop quickly even when the sun is out.
One of the instruments fitted to these telescopes, the IMACS spectrograph, can observe hundreds of stars or galaxies at the same time in a single night. This ability to capture many objects at once makes the facility especially useful for large-scale surveys of the night sky.
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