Observatorio del Pangue
A public observatory, displaying powerful, premium telescopes, under one of the best skies of the world, intended for the most enthusiastic visitors to whom we deliver personalized attention...
In short, welcome! Un observatorio astronómico público, con telescopios potentes de ultima generación, bajo uno de los mejores cielos del mundo, con servicio personalizado pensado para un público mas exigente...
En pocas palabras : bienvenidos
IN ENGLISH : ALL ABOUT THE OBSERVATORIO DEL PANGUE
EN FRANCAIS : TOUS LES DÉTAILS PRATIQUES SUR L'OBSERVATOIRE
EN ESPAÑOL : TODO SOBRE EL OBSERVATORIO DEL PANGUE
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DEEP SKY SOUTH : Remote Astronomy at Observatorio del Pangue
We still offer a service of hosting telescopes or private observatories for those stargazers who enjoy accessing to the Southern sky in optimal conditions. Don't worry for technical support or high speed internet, we provide it all.
For more information and availabilities, feel free to visit us at www.deepskysouth.org
□□□Vease también:
ALERTA EN TURISMO ASTRONÓMICO:
SEPAN DE LOS OBSERVATORIOS QUE NO LO SON !... (click aqui)
□□□ CONSULTEN AQUI LAS PREGUNTAS FRECUENTES EN ASTRONOMÍA
IMAGEN ASTRONÓMICA DEL DÍA
□□□ ...Y DE PASO ECHEN UN VISTAZO A LA IMAGEN ASTRONÓMICA DEL DÍA :
Click here to link to the original site "Astronomy Picture of the Day".Cliquer ici pour accéder à la version française "Image Astronomique du Jour".
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C/2023-A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS :
the show is over...
Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - October 16, 2024
The comet always displayed a long, straight tail, barely flared, which was a constant view all along its visit to the inner Solar System.
Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - October, 20, 2024
Canon 60D at prime focus of 71mm refractor f/5.3
Here we can appreciate the bright, round false nucleus of the comet.
Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - October 23, 2024
Canon 60D at prime focus of 71mm refractor f/5.3 It's always hard to say farewell to a nice visitor, and even more when you know that it will only return in about 80,000 years !...
A regular sunset (at least, twice a year...)
Canon 60D at prime focus of 71mm refractor f/5.3
The second 2024 Total Solar Eclipse was
in Argentina: we've been there too !
Do you notice that in the view below that it looks very similar to the flag of Turkey ? And then the clouds came denser, and more numerous, which made us miss the Last Contact : isn't there an incentive to go and see the next eclipse ?... After the show, why not visit the replica of the ship of Magallanes that sits proudly on the dock of Puerto San Julian ?... Eclipse pictures : Cristian Valenzuela, September 17 (Moon), and October 2 (Sun), 2024
Tourist picture : Eric Escalera
The first 2024 Total Solar Eclipse was
in Texas : we've been there !
11:00am, 2,5 hours until totality. Here we are, installed on the only public bench, and the sky is cloudy. Do I detect some breaks in the cloud mass? Yes, I do. The sky is becoming “partially cloudy”, with growing areas of blue sky. We can use now the binoculars to watch the Sun, that makes me feel good.
12:00pm, First Contact scheduled in 15 minutes more, now we anticípate the path of the clear areas to guess if one of them will coincide with the Sun at the right moment. And it did so : First Contact spotted through the binoculars, the tiny black limb of the Moon is definitely here. Whatever happens now, at least we’ve seen the 2024 Texas Eclipse! But we want more. The Moon is progressing fast over the Sun, and the clouds still run all over : is there a chance after all that we witness the totality ? The partial phase lasts only 1 hour and 18 minutes, it seems factible, just need to keep looking at the shrinking of the Moon crescent. 01h28pm, totality in 4 minutes, and the Sun keeps swimming among the black clouds ! I tried something that should never be done : remove the filter from the binoculars, although not putting an eye to them, just watch from a prudential distance the extreme light that is in there. Some 25 seconds before totality the light dimmed enough to attempt a direct visión, and I saw something extraordinary that I never saw before : the Moon was not a crescent anymore, just a thin yellow line slightly curved, spanning some 10 degrees, and flying transversally behind the clouds (which actually were the ones moving…), it definitely looks like an alien spaceship, until it suddenly disappeared, replaced by the magnificent Sun corona surrounding the black disk of the Moon : totality ! We saw it, and I instantly realized that, no, until now I didn’t feel good at all, it was a nervous sensation… Surprisingly, the totality coincided with a cloudless area which lasted almost all the expected time. And we enjoyed it indeed. Why is each total eclipse systematically indescribable ? Let me say at least that everything was there : the irregular lunar limb still playing with the sunlight for a couple of seconds, the delicate structure of the Sun corona, and, a few moments after the start of totality, the apparition of some prominences, one of them notably extended, displaying its particular mix of pink and purple, a spectacular colour that cannot be rendered by any picture, it can be appreciated only in live. For this trip we had decided to make visual observing only, with Celestron SkyWatcher 15x70 binoculars, but Cristian is an astrophotographer and couldn’t help but sacrifice some precious seconds to take a few snapshots of the eclipse, although losing almost nothing of the live show. We visited Los Angeles, and Venice Beach, we touched the actual De Lorean time machine, and a recovered piece of the Titanic body, we entered almost all the casinos of Las Vegas, we saw the cross marks where President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, we visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston (and, yes, we had a problem…), we rode on the desertic Route 66, but none of these memories will replace the feeling of those 4 minutes. Yet the totality ended, the short straight line was back, soon replaced by a thin crescent Sun, but shortly after the sky became cloudy again, covering a large part of the final partial phase.
Nevertheless, I managed to watch the Last Contact through some thin transparent clouds, which allowed me to make a virtual connection with the next eclipse… A few moments of the totality... (click to enlarge) .
Text and tourist pictures : Eric Escalera
Eclipse pictures : Cristian Valenzuela, april 8, 2024
Have you ever seen a neutron star?...
In the picture below, we succeeded to capture the light from the neutron star itself: this is the faintest of the two components of the tight apparent pair of stars near the centre of the nebula. In the close-up hereafter, see the marks to locate the neutron star (click to enlarge) Photo: Cristian Valenzuela
Observatorio del Pangue
February 16th, 2024
Canon 60D at prime focus of SCT Meade LX200 16" f/10
Total exposure 40 minutes
North is up
Three galaxies and a visitor comet...
On the evening of December 13th, the comet come to nestle in the heart of the trio of galaxies. At least viewed from Earth : you certainly noticed that the galaxies are located one million million times further away (strange enough, a proportion quite similar to that of the encouter of Ceres with the galaxy M100, ocurred 9 months ago...) And of course we've been there to capture this unusual arrangement... In the picture below, the galaxies display some structures, while the comet shows only the round, fuzzy false nucleus, surrounded by a faint hint of coma. From left to right, the faint fuzzies visibles here are : galaxies NGC7599 and NGC7590, comet ZTF, and galaxy NGC7582 Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - December 13th, 2023
North is up
The Northeast Astronomy Forum 2023 (NEAF) : we've been there !
Yes, our booth is somewhere among the many exhibitors who attended the 2023 edition of the NEAF...
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Whatever the circumstance, we never forget to connect with the heavens : the view below, taken from Brooklyn, shows lower Manhattan behind the Brooklyn Bridge but, can you glimpse the tiny white dot up in the sky ?...
This is planet Venus ! (click to enlarge)
Lately, at the Observatorio del Pangue...
Photos: (1)Eric Escalera (2)Jean Pichon / Observatorio del Pangue In this column we display some of the most relevant news, pictures, or feelings happening around the observatory. For a complete information on the place and the proposed programmes, you can visit our "facts" pages, listed at the top of the blog.
...and lastly, as to check if we really are as famous as the below picture suggests, don't hesitate to visit us, we'd be delighted to welcome you...
March 26th, a rare cosmic encounter...
M100 is a magnificent face-on spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices, distant of roughly 60 million light-years, that is some 1,5 million of million times farther ! And even so, they succeded to meet... at least from our perspective : on the evening of last March 26th, Ceres crossed in front of M100 in our sky, in a rare event not to be missed. The picture below was taken at the beginning of the pass, with Ceres just "touching" the most external spiral arm of the galaxy. It is visible as a very bright spot at the upper left of the galactic nucleus. Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - March 26th, 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of SCT Meade LX200 16" reduced at f/6, total exposure 10 minutes. North is up
Astrophotography at Pangue : season 2023 begins...
Canon 60D at prime focus of 71mm refractor, total exposure 25 minutes.
North is up
ZTF, the "Green Comet"
The picture below shows the bright, extended coma (left side) followed by the flared, irregularly shaped dust tail (right side). The green color of the coma, rather common on comets, is due to the presence of diatomic carbon (C2), while the brownish (reddish?) tint of the tail is produced by the usual interaction of sunshine with dust. Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - February, 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of SCT Meade LX200 16" reduced at f/6, ISO 3200, total exposure 10 minutes.
A pair of distant stellar explosions, both bright enough for visual telescopes...
To identify the supernova among the stars, you may need some help from the bottom picture, where it is marked by the two lines... The other one, labelled SN2023bee, shown up in a more distant galaxy, NGC2708 (Hya), located some 85 million light-years away. Even so, at a magnitude of 13.4, it looks much brighter than "axu", hence evidencing a much more powerful stellar explosion... Hereafter we display a picture that we took near its maximum magnitude, followed by the marked view to identify the supernova : Photos: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - February 24th, 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of SCT Meade LX200 16" reduced at f/6, ISO 4000, total exposure 14 minutes. North is up.
A private event at the observatory / edition 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of 71mm refractor f/5.3