Press Releases: Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory

3 October 2022: The SOAR Telescope in Chile, operated by NSF NOIRLab, imaged the more than 10,000 kilometers long trail of debris blasted from the surface of Dimorphos two days after the asteroid was impacted by NASA’s DART spacecraft.

12 September 2022: The 570-megapixel US Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera at NOIRLab’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile is one of the most powerful tools in astronomy and astrophysics. To commemorate its first decade of discovery and exploration, NOIRLab has released a stunning image of the Lobster Nebula, a brilliant star-forming region located 8000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Scorpius. The image was unveiled at a conference highlighting DECam’s breakthrough science results.

14 July 2022: NSF NOIRLab’s Teen Astronomy Café educational program is proud to present its newest initiative: Teen Astronomy Café — To Go! This online, free program provides complete digital education packages, aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, suitable for informal use by students alone and by classroom educators. Using science-grade data actively engages students and encourages them to think and act like scientists. Five ‘Instant Packs’ are now available, each focusing on a different astronomy research topic.

30 June 2022: An unusual ultra-faint dwarf galaxy has been discovered on the outer fringes of the Andromeda Galaxy thanks to the sharp eyes of an amateur astronomer examining archival data processed by NSF NOIRLab’s Community Science and Data Center. Follow-up by professional astronomers using the International Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF NOIRLab, revealed that the dwarf galaxy — Pegasus V — contains very few heavier elements and is likely to be a fossil of the first galaxies.

3 May 2022: The interacting galaxy pair NGC 1512 and NGC 1510 take center stage in this image from the US Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, a state-of-the-art wide-field imager on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. NGC 1512 has been in the process of merging with its smaller galactic neighbor for 400 million years, and this drawn-out interaction has ignited waves of star formation.

22 February 2022: This image, taken by astronomers using the US Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, a Program of NSF NOIRLab, captures the galaxy NGC 1566 as it twirls, flinging its arms through the vastness of space. Colloquially nicknamed the Spanish Dancer, this spiral galaxy is often studied by astronomers learning about galaxy groups, stars of different ages, and galactic black holes.

15 February 2022: NOIRLab's Journey Through the Universe — returning with an online program this year — will share the wonders of the Universe and career awareness in science and technology with Hawaiʻi students. In partnership with the Hawaiʻi Department of Education Hilo-Waiakea Complex Area, this year’s implementation of the flagship astronomy outreach program consists of a week of virtual programming along with a new cultural exchange program between classrooms in NOIRLab’s host cities in Hawaiʻi, Chile, and Arizona.

3 February 2022: At a press conference today, NSF NOIRLab announced that it has been selected, along with the SKA Observatory (SKAO), by the International Astronomical Union to host the new IAU Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference. The center coordinates collaborative multidisciplinary international efforts with institutions and individuals and works across multiple geographic areas to help mitigate the negative impact of satellite constellations on ground-based optical and radio astronomy observations as well as humanity’s enjoyment of the night sky.

1 February 2022: By scanning the sky very close to the horizon at sunrise, the SOAR Telescope in Chile, part of Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory, a Program of NSF NOIRLab, has helped astronomers confirm the existence of only the second-known Earth Trojan asteroid and reveals that it is over a kilometer wide — about three times larger than the first.

12 January 2022: Using the 4.1-meter SOAR Telescope in Chile, astronomers have discovered the first example of a binary system where a star in the process of becoming a white dwarf is orbiting a neutron star that has just finished turning into a rapidly spinning pulsar. The pair, originally detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, is a “missing link” in the evolution of such binary systems.

22 December 2021: Using observations and archival data from several of NSF NOIRLab’s observatories, together with observations from telescopes around the world and in orbit, astronomers have discovered at least 70 new free-floating planets — planets that wander through space without a parent star — in a nearby region of the Milky Way. This is the largest sample of such planets found in a single group and it nearly doubles the number known over the entire sky.

5 November 2021: NSF NOIRLab fully supports the scientific vision of Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s and stands ready, along with our managing organization, AURA, to join our community in advocating for and contributing to the implementation of the survey’s recommendations. NOIRLab along with its partners are honored that the community has ranked the US Extremely Large Telescope Program as the highest ground-based priority in Pathways to Discovery.

23 September 2021: The denizens of the Fornax galaxy cluster populate this image from the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope, located in Chile at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF NOIRLab. The irregular galaxy lurking in the bottom left corner of this Dark Energy Survey image is NGC 1427A, and its headlong plunge into the heart of the Fornax Cluster over millions of years will eventually result in the galaxy’s disruption.

31 August 2021: A spectacular portrait of the galaxy Centaurus A has been captured by astronomers using the Dark Energy Camera mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. This galaxy’s peculiar appearance — cloaked in dark tendrils of dust — stems from a past interaction with another galaxy, and its size and proximity to Earth make it one of the best-studied giant galaxies in the night sky.

23 August 2021: Using the powerful 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) in Chile, astronomers just ten days ago discovered an asteroid with the shortest orbital period of any known asteroid in the Solar System. The orbit of the approximately 1-kilometer-diameter asteroid takes it as close as 20 million kilometers (12 million miles or 0.13 au), from the Sun every 113 days. Asteroid 2021 PH27, revealed in images acquired during twilight, also has the smallest mean distance (semi-major axis) of any known asteroid in our Solar System — only Mercury has a shorter period and smaller semi-major axis. The asteroid is so close to the Sun’s massive gravitational field, it experiences the largest general relativistic effects of any known Solar System object.

25 June 2021: A giant comet from the outskirts of our Solar System has been discovered in 6 years of data from the Dark Energy Survey. Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is estimated to be about 1000 times more massive than a typical comet, making it arguably the largest comet discovered in modern times. It has an extremely elongated orbit, journeying inward from the distant Oort Cloud over millions of years. It is the most distant comet to be discovered on its incoming path, giving us years to watch it evolve as it approaches the Sun, though it's not predicted to become a naked-eye spectacle.

27 May 2021: In 29 new scientific papers, the Dark Energy Survey examines the largest-ever maps of galaxy distribution and shapes, extending more than 7 billion light-years across the Universe. The extraordinarily precise analysis, which includes data from the survey’s first three years, contributes to the most powerful test of the current best model of the Universe, the standard cosmological model. However, hints remain from earlier DES data and other experiments that matter in the Universe today is a few percent less clumpy than predicted.

15 March 2021: AstroDay–Chile’s annual astronomy education festival will take place entirely online in Spanish for the first time in 2021, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2007, AstroDay has provided unique opportunities for the public to engage with the scientists and staff who work at the most important observatories in Chile. This year’s event takes place from 17 to 19 March 2021 and all activities are free to engage with online.

22 February 2021: Journey Through the Universe — which, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, will take place entirely online for the first time in 2021 — will share the wonders of the Universe and the possibilities of a career in science and technology with school students on Hawai‘i Island. This year’s iteration of the flagship astronomy education and outreach program is highlighted by a week of virtual educational programming from 1 to 5 March 2021.

8 February 2021: The Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which was originally designed for the Dark Energy Survey, has captured one of the deepest images ever taken of Messier 83, a spiral galaxy playfully known as the Southern Pinwheel. Built by the US Department of Energy, DECam is mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF NOIRLab.