Qualla: Las Campanas Observatory https://qualla.com/las-campanas-observatory en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:39:57 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Las Campanas Observatory https://qualla.com/las-campanas-observatory Las Campanas Observatory: Introduction https://qualla.com/las-campanas-observatory/ On the night of February 24, 1987, a Canadian astronomer named Ian Shelton stepped outside the dome and looked up. He had been photographing the Large Magellanic Cloud and noticed a star in his plates that did not belong. Oscar Duhalde, the telescope operator on duty, had already seen it with his own eyes. They had caught Supernova 1987A, the closest exploding star observed since before the invention of the telescope, bright enough to see without any instrument at all. The place where they stood was Las Campanas, a 7-kilometer ridge of bare rock rising above the southern Atacama, where the sky is so dark and so steady that the universe seems to lean in close.

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/v/d/las-campanas-observatory-wp/66vd-las-campanas-observatory-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Las Campanas Observatory: Where the Air Goes Still https://qualla.com/las-campanas-observatory/ Carnegie astronomers came here in 1969 for a simple reason: the lights of Los Angeles had begun to drown out the stars above their old home at Mount Wilson. They needed darkness, and the Atacama, the driest non-polar desert on Earth, offered it in abundance. About 100 kilometers ...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/v/d/las-campanas-observatory-wp/66vd-las-campanas-observatory-where-the-air-goes-still.mp3 0:06 2 full Las Campanas Observatory: A Family of Mirrors https://qualla.com/las-campanas-observatory/ The first telescope arrived in 1971, the one-meter Swope, named for the astronomer Henrietta Swope. The larger 2.5-meter Irénée du Pont followed in 1977. Then came the giants. The two Magellan telescopes, each carrying a single 6.5-meter mirror, are near-identical twins: the Walt...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/v/d/las-campanas-observatory-wp/66vd-las-campanas-observatory-a-family-of-mirrors.mp3 0:06 3 full Las Campanas Observatory: The Giant Taking Shape https://qualla.com/las-campanas-observatory/ Near the southern end of the ridge, on a peak called Cerro Las Campanas, construction is underway on something larger still. The Giant Magellan Telescope will gather light with seven enormous mirrors, each 8.4 meters across, arranged like the petals of a flower around a central o...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/v/d/las-campanas-observatory-wp/66vd-las-campanas-observatory-the-giant-taking-shape.mp3 0:06 4 full Las Campanas Observatory: Reading the Faintest Light https://qualla.com/las-campanas-observatory/ What draws astronomers to a mountaintop like this is the chance to catch light that left its source billions of years ago, light so dim that a single stray glow on the horizon can erase it. From here, researchers hunt for planets around other stars, weigh the dark matter that hol...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/v/d/las-campanas-observatory-wp/66vd-las-campanas-observatory-reading-the-faintest-light.mp3 0:06 5 full