Las Campanas

View of the telescopes at the Las Campanas Observatory, taken yesterday morning at the end of a crappy night. We got high humidity (which is very rare, here) to the point that we had been forced to close the dome to avoid vapor condensation on the mirror. The first part of the night was decent, but not as good as we were hoping for, as the “seeing” was never better than 0.8 arcsec (here can be as good as 0.2 arcsec, which is 4 times better than what we got). Tonight was even worse, though, with the persistent humidity that robbed us of the first part of the night, and then en even worse seeing around 1.5 - 2 arcsec (this is the sky quality of Boston!). Anyway, we did manage to do something but I am not sure how useful the result will turn to be. We still have other two nights, so I am crossing my fingers to get some of the excellent weather this place is famous for.

In the photo you can see all the telescopes on this mountain. The double angular construction on the right houses the two Magellan telescopes: Baade on the right and Clay on the left. I am currently observing at Baade. Both have a 6.5 meter diameter primary mirror. The smaller telescopes are, from left to right, the Polish telescope, the Henrietta Swope telescope and the Irénée DuPont telescope.