Planning, Executing, Wrapping up your run at CTIO

Before your run:

For YOUR Information:

• Visiting Astronomers Travel Guide
• NOIRLab proposal information
• Director's discretionary time
• Basic Integral Security Guide for Visitors and Foreign Residents in Chile (PDF, from ONEMI – The National Emergency Bureau)
• Meet our staff at science tea in the La Serena office library, Fridays @11am, except on days where we have a colloquium scheduled.
• You will not be able to connect to the CTIO internet until you have have registered the equipment's MAC address here.  Please check our Visitor's Computer Guidelines.
• Remote Observing guidelines for the Blanco Telescope

For OUR Information:

• Once you have arranged your trip, please let us know your Travel Plans.
• Please tell us the instrument setup you need by filling in the visitor support questionaire.
• Please consider giving a talk -- CTIO staff are always interested to hear what others are doing in the astronomical community.

During the run:

Our mountain observing support staff provides most of the support for observers on Cerro Tololo itself. For the V. M. Blanco 4-m Telescope, each instrument has a scientific staff contact for additional help. The smaller telescopes are operated by the SMARTS Consortium, and queries should be directed to SMARTS personnel.

At the end of every night at every telescope, a report form must be filled out. At all telescopes this is the responsibility of the observer. The observing assistant (Blanco, SOAR) will remind the observer to fill out the form as necessary.  For the Blanco the form is here.  At SOAR, the operator will indicate the location of the link.  At SMARTS telescopes, please follow their protocol.

2020 Ephemeris data for Cerro Tololo (be careful of winter/summer time). (Other years: 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018 - 2019 - 2020 - 2021 - 2022 - 2023 - 2024 - 2025 -2026 - 2027 - 2028 - 2029)

CTIO runs a Target-of-Opportunity program which may require that your observations be interrupted.  The official policy is here.

You may wish to review the weather rules for closing and re-opening the Blanco telescope.

After the run:

In order to make sure that we stay competitive as a front-line observatory, we need to know how successful your run was. PLEASE fill in one of these forms before you leave CTIO!: End-of-run report form for all CTIO telescopes