Local inauguration of Rolf Chini Cerro Murphy Observatory in Chile
April has been an eventful month for the Araucaria Project, because we took part in a series of events leading to the local, Chilean inauguration of the Rolf Chini Cerro Murphy Observatory (OCM for short).
OCM has been inaugurated on November 28, 2023, at the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland, which is covered in this post. That inauguration, although first and very distinguished, was quite remote, as it happened far away from the observatory itself.
To create a more in-person experience of the OCM inauguration, a local ceremony was planned at the end of April 2024, and preceded by a few smaller celebrations that built up the excitement for the inauguration day: presentation of OCM at the space and aviation international fair FIDAE and at the Polish Embassy in Santiago de Chile.
The local inauguration day was preceded by dinner on April 22, 2024 in the Antofagasta Hotel, where some of the inauguration invitees gathered to carry on casual conversations in a relaxed setting before the big day.
Finally, on April 23, 2024, the day of the local inauguration of OCM in Chile has come. Remaining guests, who couldn’t join the dinner the previous night, arrived in the morning, and with the rest of the party got on a bus to ESO’s Paranal Observatory, which was the host of the OCM inauguration.
After arrival to the Paranal Residence, the guests took their seats in the conference room and connected via internet to observers/telescope operators stationed at OCM, who gave a virtual tour of the observatory and officially unveiled a plaque with the name of the Rolf Chini Cerro Murphy Observatory. After applause and speeches of distinguished guests and scholars, the director of ESO took the guests on a personalised guided tour of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), where they visited one of the VLT units, the control room, and witnessed the sunset on the top of the Paranal mountain. Dinner in the Paranal Residency was followed by more casual conversations, which seamlessly transitioned to star gazing.
The guests left Paranal Residency the next day with a lasting memory of the inauguration day, and with a wish to return to OCM for yet another inauguration of the 2.5-m telescope in 2026.
