CHILESCOPE

Our first-priority goal is to provide members of astronomic community with access to the top-quality equipment under dark sky with sub second seeing in the Southern Hemisphere. Our motto is Astronomy on demand. HOW IT WORKS? Firstly, you log in to the website and create your own observing program with the help of the friendly interface. Secondly, you are enabled to download observing schedules and necessary astronomic data to your hard drive automatically, to pick one from our three telescopes and to choose filters, exposures, a camera and some other options needed. Just set up the program you need — the rest is already there. You won’t have to buy expensive pieces of astronomic equipment, waste time travelling to the location, work with hardware and software to program your session. System malfunctions, bad weather or anything else that can diminish the quality of distant observing? Don’t worry, in such cases we guarantee money back.

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LOCATION

We had been looking for a perfect place to build the observatory for more than half a year before we found one in the Chilean Andes. We express our wholehearted gratitude to our colleagues and partners from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile and Obstech (www.obstech.cl) for giving us a hand while accomplishing this challenging task. Obstech team is providing telescope hosting and is highly recommended for those who want to place their own telescopes under dark Chilean sky. The closest city to the location: Ovalle The closest city with an airport: La Serena

Look on the map

ADVANTAGES

While choosing the location, we took into account the following indispensable requirements:

CLEAR SKY

Minimum 280-300 clear nights during the year

FREE OF DUST

Minimum dust in the air

DARK SKY

Minimum light pollution

EASY ACCESS

The possibility to get on site by 4X4 track

HIGH-SPEED INTERNET

40 mbit per second internet line plus 4G LTE backup Internet channel

AUTOMATED SYSTEM

The possibility of remote control and monitoring of all astronomical equipment

ACCOMMODATION

The possibility to accommodate up to 4 people at place

SOLAR POWER SYSTEM

Full autonomous solar electrical station 16Kw with diesel backup generator

LIVING ENVIRONMENT

SEEING

Seeing measurement on site used to be carried out on a regular basis while working with Celestron 9,5″. The average level of seeing is below 1 arc second, the level during better nights is approximately 0.6-0.8 arc second. The measurements were performed at 1.5 m above ground level. The telescopes are to stay at 3-4.5 m above the surface, and hence we expect seeing levels to be even higher. You can see some of reports on seeing below:

Seeing of Sunday, 09 March of 2014
Median value = 0,52 Arcsec

Seeing of Monday, 10 March of 2014
Median value = 0,37 Arcsec

Seeing of Saturday, 02 May of 2015
Median value = 0,86 Arcsec

OUR CUSTOMERS

The requirements for the place were as follows:

PROFESSIONAL SCIENTISTS

Large professional telescopes are hard to book and very expensive. From other hand there are science programs that can be done on 1 meter or even smaller telescope. Why stay in line for large telescope and spend budget in inefficient way? CHILESCOPE scheduling system is very flexible. You can book exactly time and equipment you need from 10 minutes to 1 year science program. In case of long term special research program we can provide full direct access to telescope so you can work with all technical parameters of the observing session.

EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

Show your students how practical astronomic research looks like! Come up with your own educational astronomic programs from a simple laboratory-based work to serious scientific research. Save on logistics and other overheads. Besides, CHILESCOPE offers special terms for educational institutions.

ADVANCED AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS

Take stunning astronomic photographs of the southern sky using hi-end sub-second seeing equipment! Whereas some amateurs prefer acting with their own setups (transportation, powering, positioning, polar alignment, guiding, etc.), our approach is for those who are mostly focused on data processing work. CHILESCOPE provides high-quality raw data, and you turn your astrophoto into a masterpiece! Just get top-level photos and focus on post-processing instead of making calibration images and getting the equipment ready.

Let’s start today!

OUR TEAM

We are a group made up with both professional and amateur astronomers with great experience in practical astronomy, which has been our field of activity for more than two decades. Our achievements speak for themselves: astrophoto of deep space objects, numerous APODs, completely automated remote-control observatory the Atacama Desert (Chile), and 97% of non-malfunction work in the complete remote mode for 2 years. Throughout this time we have got deep knowledge of electronics, mechanics and software components of modern astronomic observatory. We are capable of choosing, combining and tuning all necessary elements, and thus of making an observatory work with minimum human intervention. Nowadays we enjoy this experience to develop our dream observatory.