The astronomy group at the Univ. of Concepción operates a modern Meade 12-inch telescope on top of our Faculty building. The telescope is equipped with a CCD camera and serves for public outreach, student training, and professional astronomical observing. Smaller telescopes can also be set up on the 6th floor balcony (or on the lawns outside our department) for viewing brighter celestial objects. Depending on both weather conditions (if clear) and target availability (if the object is high in the sky), public viewing with the telescopes includes direct viewing and photographing of our moon, our solar system planets (Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), nearby star clusters in our galaxy, and other galaxies. Short presentations on various astronomical topics will also take place at every visit. A professor and several students from the astronomy group will be at hand to answer any questions. Bear in mind that it is neccessary to climb one flight of steps to access the telescope.

Public Visits

Note: Public visits are suspended during the university vacations. We will recommence public nights on March 20.
Public visits (open to all public) are held on the 5th and 20th of every month (8:00 to 9:30 p.m. April to September, and 9:00 to 10:30 p.m. October to March). Visits include a 20-30 minute presentation or demonstration, followed by viewing through the telescopes. We reccommend that you attend only if the sky is clear; with clouds or rain one cannot view any celestial objects through the telescopes but only attend the presentation. While no appointments are neccessary on these nights, we may limit the number of visitors to 20 due to limitations in size of the telescope area. Children less than 15 years old must be accompanied by an adult.

Additionally, groups of 10 to 20 people (school and university students, and other organizations) can make a special appointment to visit on any date depending on availability of the telescope and staff. Please contact us at the above phone number or email address to make an appointment. For security reasons, the building housing the telescope is locked every evening. The meeting point for the public visits is therefore just outside the main entrance of the building (at the sign marked "Telescopio"). Visitors will be then guided to and from the telescope by our staff.

Student Training

The 12 inch telescope uses a state-of-the-art CCD (Charge Coupled Device) camera controlled by a P.C. in the neighboring control room. This enables one to obtain digital long-exposure images of many distant objects in our Galaxy, and also external galaxies. The telescope and CCD is used by students for several course-related projects.

Professional Astronomy

On clear nights, the telescope is sometimes used for professional astronomy (monitoring the light curves (i.e. variations in brightness as determined from multiple images of the same source) of variable sources (variable stars and cataclysmic variables) in our Galaxy.