Organization | Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Observatory code | I09 | ||||||||||
Location | Antofagasta Region, Chile | ||||||||||
Coordinates | 24°35′55″S 70°12′05″W / 24.59867°S 70.20128°W | ||||||||||
Altitude | 2,817 metres (9,242 ft) | ||||||||||
Established | 2005 | ||||||||||
Website | The Araucaria Project – Observatory Cerro Murphy | ||||||||||
Telescopes | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
Related media on Commons | |||||||||||
Cerro Murphy Observatory (Spanish: Observatorio Cerro Murphy, OCM; Polish: Obserwatorium Cerro Murphy, OCM; German: Observatorium Cerro Murphy, OCM; full name since 2023 is Rolf Chini Cerro Murphy Observatory) is an international astrophysical project hosted by the ESO Paranal Observatory and operated by the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The observatory is located on Cerro Murphy, which is a hill located 1 kilometre (0.62 miles) to the southwest and 230 metres (750 ft) below the summit of Cerro Armazones, a mountain in the Antofagasta Region of Chile, 120 km (75 mi) south of Antofagasta.[1] OCM is located at 2,817 m (9,242 ft) altitude and currently houses 5 telescopes, whose diameters range between 0.3 and 1.5 m.
The observatory was established in 2005, owned and operated jointly by the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) and the Catholic University of the North (UCN) until 2020, when it was transferred to the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences (CAMK), and is now run by the Araucaria Project. The largest Polish telescope, with a mirror of diameter of 2.5 m, is currently being built by Astro Systeme Austria (ASA) and will start operations at OCM in 2026.
Three other observatories nearby are: the Paranal Observatory operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (currently under construction), and the Cherenkov Telescope Array gamma-ray telescope (also under construction, hosted by ESO).