The telescopes

So, once you're on the mountain, you could say there are several picks as to which telescope you use. However, that's not exactly the case. First it still has to be operational - which isn't the case for all the telescopes in La Silla and you have to have been awarded by time to use it by ESO or organisation that runs it. (Warning - if you find telescopes boring then don't read the rest).

The first to mention is the one in my previous post that you can see on top of a hill (though this is 2500+m). This is called the 3.6 telescope and is host to the HARPS instrument, which is a relative velocity spectrograph. Essentially it looks for planets and is maintained by ESO:




The next to mention, and far more important (as I actually use it) is the 2.2m telescope. This is host to 3 instruments: GROND (Gamma-ray Burst Optical Near-Infa-Red Detector), WFI (Wide Field Imager), FEROS (some type of spectrometer).



Finally, is the NTT (New Technology Telescope). This is a specially designed telescope where the entire building can move both rotationally and azimuthally - though I forget it's importance in comparisons to the other, though I really shouldn't. This is home to a spectrometer and two imagers also (EMMI, SUSI2 & SOFI).


The 3 telescopes mentioned above are maintained by ESO, the only exception is that GROND is not maintained by ESO, but by the MPE. There are also several more telescopes that are at La Silla, but are not ESO or are no longer used or are some sort of instrumental device. I will quickly mention these:

DIMM (Differential Imaging Motion Monitor....) - This collects information about the local environment, e.g. seeing, airmass and other useful things for observers.

(The picture is the little box thing infront of the NTT photograph)

REM - This is a robotic telescope (completely unmanned) owned by the Belgians (box thing between the two big telescopes)


EULER - This is a telescope owned and maintained by the Swiss. They eat lots of fondoo and drink lots of wine here - I'm unsure if they do any work or just enjoy the location, as they have the best view. You can sometimes see Alpackas (llama things) and verschachas (chilean rabbit/hare thingies). This has (as far as I know) an instrument called COROLI that looks for planets.



(Swiss is on the right where there is a car parked)

SEST - This is a microwave telescope owned by the Swedish. At one point they accidentally broke the telescope pointing it upwards. They couldn't fix it before the sun got to Noon and the primary mirror caused the detector to melt onto the mirror. This, I guess, took a while to fix (it's the antenna thing on the far right).


Microwave tower - this is how the internet is transfered into the Atacama desert. Entel is the only company that does it and so I hear they charge a ridiculous amount of money.


Danish & Others - I forget which is which, but the following are no longer used (apart from 1.5m - I think - Danish telescope which is used 1/2 of the year).



All in all there a lot, but the following picture sums up the most notable (excluding the swiss telescope):

Left to right: 2.2, Danish, NTT, 3.6