SMARTS Telescopes at 2,207 m (7,240 ft).

Public observatory · Vicuna, Coquimbo Region, Chile

SMARTS Telescopes

SMARTS Telescopes is a public observatory in Vicuna, Coquimbo Region, Chile. It is open to the public. SMARTS Telescopes sits inside Gabriela Mistral Dark Sky Sanctuary, a Bortle Class 2 dark sky place.

SMARTS Telescopes in brief

Open to the public
Yes
Elevation
2,207 m (7,240 ft)
Bortle class
Not yet rated
Part of
CTIO Observatory
Operated by
NOIRLab

Official site

Can you visit SMARTS Telescopes? Yes

Free Saturday daytime tours of Cerro Tololo by reservation through NOIRLab/CTIO.

A public night at an observatory usually starts at dusk with a short talk, then a line at the eyepiece of the main telescope for the Moon, a planet or a bright cluster, with volunteers' smaller telescopes set up outside. Dress for the night air even in summer: domes are not heated, so the telescope stays at outside temperature. Many nights sell out or cancel for clouds, so check the observatory's site on the day.

Telescopes at SMARTS Telescopes

1.5m, 1.3m, 1.0m, 0.9m.

can rent for $200/hr

CTIO Observatory: 12 observatories on one site

How dark the sky is at SMARTS Telescopes

SMARTS Telescopes has no Bortle rating in the list yet. The scale below shows what each class looks like.

1 mag 8.0 21.99+ 2 mag 7.5 21.89+ 3 mag 7.0 21.69+ 4 mag 6.5 20.49+ 5 mag 6.0 19.50+ 6 mag 5.5 18.94+ 7 mag 5.0 18.38+ 8 mag 4.5 18.00+ 9 mag 4.0
The Bortle scale. Each panel shows the class number, the faintest star the naked eye reaches at the zenith, and the darkest-edge sky brightness reading of that class in mag/arcsec².

Sky brightness and class come from the World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness (Falchi et al. 2016, CC BY-NC 4.0), with natural skyglow added, at the coordinates below. Research telescopes are often sited on mountains above the haze, so the real sky can be darker than the map suggests.

SMARTS Telescopes among the observatories of Chile

Alto Loa National Reserve Bosque Fray Jorge National Park Gabriela Mistral Dark Sky Sanctuary Mano del Desierto Río Hurtado Rolf Chini Cerro Murphy Observatory Extremely Large Telescope Llano de Chajnantor Observatory SOAR Telescope (Southern Astrophysical Research) Giant Magellan Telescope CTAO South (Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory South) MASCARA-South BlackGEM Array MPG/ESO 2.2m Telescope Rapid Eye Mount Telescope Swiss Euler Telescope TAROT-South TRAPPIST Telescope VISTA Survey Telescope VLT Survey Telescope Next-Generation Transit Survey UCN 84 Telescope IRIS Telescope Victor M. Blanco 4m Telescope SARA South Telescope CHASE Telescope PROMPT Telescope GONG Telescope Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper Atacama Pathfinder Experiment Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment NANTEN2 Observatory University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory Huan Tran Telescope (HTT) All Sky Automated Survey HAT-South BiSON Deep Sky Chile Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope Simons Observatory ExTrA Danish 1.54m Telescope SPECULOOS-South VLT Auxiliary Telescopes Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope KMTNet-CTIO HATPI CLASS Telescopes Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory ESO 3.6m Telescope Gemini South Observatory La Silla Observatory Las Campanas Observatory New Technology Telescope Paranal Observatory Very Large Telescope Vera C. Rubin Observatory Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array Du Pont Telescope Swope Telescope Warsaw Telescope Magellan Telescopes SMARTS Telescopes Vicuna, Coquimbo Region, Chile SMARTS Telescopes Vicuna, Coquimbo Region, Chile
Dark sky place Research or private observatory Observatory open to the public

Green dots are observatories open to the public, blue dots research or private sites, squares dark sky places; select one for its page. See Observatories in Chile for the full list.

The coordinates on this page point to SMARTS 1.5m dome (Wikipedia); other SMARTS domes within 300 m: 30.169°S, 70.807°W.

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Open the larger map · Directions. Mountain observatory roads are often gated after dark; go only on a scheduled public night.

Dark sky places, observatories and clubs near SMARTS Telescopes

SMARTS Telescopes sits inside Gabriela Mistral Dark Sky Sanctuary, a Bortle Class 2 dark sky place. See Gabriela Mistral Dark Sky Sanctuary for camping, where to set up and the sky by season.

Nearest dark sky places

PlaceWhereBortleDistance
Gabriela Mistral Dark Sky SanctuaryVicuna, Chile21 km (1 mi)
Río HurtadoPichasca, Chile228 km (17 mi)
Bosque Fray Jorge National ParkOvalle, Chile2100 km (62 mi)

Other observatories open to the public within 150 km

  • Cerro Tololo Inter-American ObservatoryCerro Tololo, Coquimbo Region, Chile, 0 km (0 mi). Occasional public visits via NOIRLab programs; check site
  • Vera C. Rubin ObservatoryVicuna, Coquimbo Region, Chile, 10 km (6 mi). Public visits to Cerro Pachon by reservation through NOIRLab; spaces fill quickly
  • Gemini South ObservatoryCerro Pachon, Coquimbo Region, Chile, 10 km (6 mi). Occasional organized visits via NOIRLab; no regular public night program
  • ESO 3.6m TelescopeLa Silla, Coquimbo Region, Chile, 101 km (63 mi). Part of ESO La Silla public visits (Saturdays; book ahead)
  • New Technology TelescopeLa Silla, Coquimbo Region, Chile, 101 km (63 mi). Part of ESO La Silla public visits
  • La Silla ObservatoryLa Silla, Coquimbo Region, Chile, 102 km (63 mi). Free guided visits Saturdays 10 am and 2 pm Sep-Mar; Sat and Sun 10 am Apr-Aug; book ahead

SMARTS Telescopes record

Every value in the observatories dataset for SMARTS Telescopes
ID441
NameSMARTS Telescopes
CityVicuna
StateCoquimbo Region
CountryChile
ContinentSouth America
Webhttp://www.astro.gsu.edu/~thenry/SMARTS/
Publicy
Telescope1.5m, 1.3m, 1.0m, 0.9m
ComplexCTIO Observatory
ParentNOIRLab
Elevation2207
Notescan rent for $200/hr
Lat-30.1692
Lon-70.80679
LatLonSpotSMARTS 1.5m dome (Wikipedia); other SMARTS domes within 300 m
StatusActive
StatusNoteSMARTS consortium 1.5m (CHIRON), 1.3m, 1.0m and 0.9m telescopes
PublicNoteFree Saturday daytime tours of Cerro Tololo by reservation through NOIRLab/CTIO
Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Tololo_Inter-American_Observatory
GlobalParkID66
ParkKm0.9

From the site's observatories dataset (observatoriesglobal_q426). Distances are computed from the coordinates.