The inauguration of Rolf Chini Cerro Murphy Observatory

Today we celebrated the inauguration of Rolf Chini Cerro Murphy Observatory, OCM in short (which comes from “Obserwatorium Cerro Murphy” in Polish language). Formerly called Cerro Armazones Observatory, the new name honours Rolf Chini, a professor at RUB who is credited with the creation and development of the observatory, and Cerro Murphy, the hill it resides on.

Hosted within ESO’s Paranal Observatory, OCM has undergone a major rebuild since 2020 and is ready to begin scientific observations again, marking a new chapter in its history. In addition to previous telescopes: 0.8-metre InfraRed Imaging System (IRIS), and the robotic 30-centimetre BMK10k, operated by the Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam, OCM now has three new telescopes: the 1.5-metre telescope Janusz Kałużny, for imaging and high resolution spectroscopy, the 0.8-metre telescope Zbigniew “Zibi” Kołaczkowski and the 0.6-metre telescope Wojtek Krzemiński, both for imaging.

The Observatory is dedicated to the Araucaria Project, a collaboration between astronomers from Chile, the USA and Europe, focused on improving the calibration of the extragalactic distance scale, a combination of methods by which astronomers measure the distance of objects throughout the Universe.

The inauguration took place in Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland, and was celebrated by about 100 scientists, politicians, journalists and esteemed guests. During the inauguration a connection with OCM was established and all the guests could see the observers onsite presenting the observatory.

The inauguration was streamed on YouTube and is available here.