La Silla Paranal Observatory: La Silla Facilities

La Silla, in the southern part of the Atacama desert, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile and at an altitude of 2400 metres is the home of ESO's original observing site.

Here ESO operates three major telescopes: the 3.6-m telescope, the New Technology Telescope (NTT), and the 2.2-m Max-Planck-ESO telescope. They are equipped with state of the art instruments either built completely by ESO or by external consortia, with substantial contribution by ESO.

La Silla Observatory is hosting regularly Visitor Instruments that are attached to a telescope, for the duration of a run of observation and then is removed from the telescope.

La Silla also hosts national telescopes, such as the 1.2-m Swiss Telescope and the 1.5-m Danish Telescope.

In Case of Emergency

In all Emergencies, dial 4444 from any phoning station,
or use beeper (93) code 00
Read the Emergency Procedures

La Silla Latest News

• April 22, 2008: A document that explains how to interface visitor instruments with focal stations of La Silla telescopes is available (2.8 MB PDF format).
• March 27, 2007: The dome of the 3.6m has been fully restored, and moves with nominal speed.