Blanco 4m Telescope

(Credit: Dadada)

A wide angle photograph of the V. M. Blanco 4-m telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.  Named for former observatory director Victor M. Blanco, who passed on in March, the telescope will be shut down later in the year for the installation of a new wide field imager, the Dark Energy Camera.  This instrument incorporates 74 CCDs and on this telescope will cover 3 square degrees of the sky in one shot (for scale, the moon would fit in it view about 15 times).  The instrument will then be used to carry out the Dark Energy Survey over the next 5 years.