Lately, at the Observatorio del Pangue...

First, you arrive at Santiago de Chile...

...then you want to travel North and meet our clear skies !

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, 14th : the long awaited Total Eclipse of the Moon...

Every lunar eclipse is visible from half of the world simultaneously, so it would be insane to miss it if you are on the right side of the planet, especially when we haven't had such an eclipse in over two years. And it is no excuse if it happens in the middle of the night, as it was the case for Chile...

The Moon fits entirely within the radius of the Earth shadow that covers it, so we can have totality even if the path of the lunar disk misses completely the center of the shadow : in such a circumstance we get a short total eclipse, lasting merely 1 hour. And this is exactly what happened on the morning of past March 14th.

And we've been there...

On the above picture, near the maximum of the eclipse (4am local time), we can appreciate a brighter portion of the limb at the lower right, corresponding to the area closer to the interior edge of the Earth shadow...

Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - March 14, 2025
Canon 60D camera at prime focus of Celestron 127mm f/11 Maksutov, from Vicuña, Chile

A perfect alignment, at last...

Every year, twice a year (February 7th and November 2nd) the Sun sets behind the Cerro Tololo International Observatory (CTIO) as seen from our own observing room. But not exactly in the same spot, as the length of the year is not 365 days, not even 365.25 days, so there are tiny variations from year to year.

This time, for the first time in over 16 years, we witnessed the "perfect alignment", that is when the centre of the solar disk coincides with the position of the centre of the base of the 4m Victor Blanco telescope, the main instrument of the CTIO.

Now we got to find out when this alignement will be repeated : could it be that we have to wait another 16 years ?...

Photos: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - February 7, 2025

C/2024-G3 ATLAS : witnessing the end of a comet !...

With the visit of the previous comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, we thought that the show was over, but just a few weeks after this memorable event, we were granted with a new remarquable visitor of similar brightness, eventually offering an ususual and spectacular ending : the disappearance of the nucleus !... For the last days of January, comet ATLAS (C/2024-G3) adorned the sunset sky, reaching to be visible as a naked eye object despite its low altitude.

We succeeded to capture it from January 19th, just one week after its perilous approach to the Sun (at a mere 13 million kms), when passing at some 150 million kms from Earth, then shining at a visual magnitude of -1.5. On the views below we can appreciate the complex structure of the long tail, as well as the extremely high density of the coma.

Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - January 19, 2025
Canon 60D camera at prime focus of William Optics 71mm f/5.9 refractor, exp. 5s, ISO 800

On the following nights we kept an eye on it, to appreciate the evolution of aspect of this particularely active comet, surprisingly maintaining its brightness day after day...

Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - January 20, 2025
Canon 60D camera at prime focus of William Optics 71mm f/5.9 refractor, exp. 5s, ISO 800

The comet at the sunset, with the CTIO observatory on the far right
Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - January 21, 2025
Canon 60D camera with 85mm lens

And then, on January 27th (during daytime in Chile), something unexpected happened : the nucleus desintegrated and quickly dissolved itself in the dense tail, leaving behind an "orphan", headless coma, that we captured the following night.

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Note the thin, straight denser "tail within the tail" on the left border of the coma, which corresponds to the last ejection of gas from the nucleus, just before its final desintegration...
Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue
January 27, 2025
Canon 60D camera at prime focus of William Optics 71mm f/5.9 refractor
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So now we can tell : the show is over...