Cerro Armazones is a mountain located in the

Sierra Vicuña Mackenna The Cordillera Vicuña Mackenna is the highest section of the Chilean Coast Range located in northern Chile, west of Pampa del Tamarugal. Its peak reaches over 3000 meters. International Geographical Union, Unesco, Peru. Ministerio de Agricultura. ...

of the

Chilean Coast Range The Chilean Coastal Range ( es, Cordillera de la Costa) is a mountain range that runs from north to south along the Pacific coast of South America parallel to the Andean Mountains, extending from Morro de Arica in the north to Taitao Peninsula, ...

, approximately south-east of Antofagasta in the Antofagasta Region,

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

. Before construction started on the European Extremely Large Telescope, the summit was a horizontal control point with an elevation of . The new elevation is . It is located in a privileged zone for

optical astronomy Visible-light astronomy encompasses a wide variety of observations via telescopes that are sensitive in the range of visible light (optical telescopes). Visible-light astronomy is part of optical astronomy, and differs from astronomies based on in ...

because it has 89% cloudless nights a year. It currently hosts the Hexapod-Telescope and other telescopes at the

Cerro Armazones Observatory Cerro Armazones Observatory (Spanish: ''Observatorio Cerro Armazones,'' OCA; German: ''Observatorium Cerro Armazones,'' OCA) was an astronomical observatory owned and operated jointly by the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) and the Catholic Universit ...

. On 26 April 2010, the

European Southern Observatory The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 mem ...

Council selected Cerro Armazones as the site for the planned Extremely Large Telescope, and construction began in June 2014.

Gallery

File:Supermoon beckons in the new year.jpg, Supermoon rising up from behind Cerro Armazones. File:Cerro Armazones night-time panorama.jpg, Night-time panorama of Cerro Armazones File:Carving a Route to Armazones.jpg, Carving a route to Armazones, with Cerro Paranal and the

Very Large Telescope The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is a telescope facility operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It consists of four individual telescopes, each with a primary mirror 8.2 m across, ...

in the background. File:Ripples Across the Chilean Sky.jpg, Result of the apparent motion of the stars through the southern sky. File:A VLT Auxiliary Telescope and Cerro Armazones.jpg, VLT's Auxiliary Telescope (AT) 2 with Cerro Armazones in the background. Credit:

ESO The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 member states for ground-based ast ...

/G. Lombardi File:Sunset Cerro Armazones.jpg, Sunset Cerro Armazones. File:From One "Alien World" to Another.jpg, 360 panorama. File:Blowing the lid off Cerro Armazones.ogg, After the groundbreaking back in June 2014, work continues on Cerro Armazones in preparation for construction work on the E-ELT. File:A Flat Armazones Vid.ogv, The peak of Cerro Armazones appears flattened as efforts continue to craft a platform for the European Extremely Large Telescope.

References

External links

Bird's view on Cerro Paranal and Cerro Armazones
Landforms of Antofagasta Region Mountains of Chile Chilean Coast Range Articles containing video clips {{Antofagasta-geo-stub