Observatories and telescopes

4MOST

4MOST (4-meter Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope) is a wide-field, fiber-fed optical spectrograph on ESO's VISTA telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile, which achieved first light in 2025.

Advanced Virgo is the second-generation, kilometer-scale gravitational-wave laser interferometer at Cascina near Pisa, Italy, operated by the Virgo Collaboration; with LIGO it localized sources like GW170814 to 60 deg².

Allen Telescope Array

The Allen Telescope Array is a radio telescope in Northern California with 42 dishes, dedicated in 2007 as the first built for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Amaterasu particle

The Amaterasu particle is an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray detected in 2021 in Utah with an energy of 244 EeV, second only to the 1991 Oh-My-God particle.

Anglo-Australian Observatory

The Anglo-Australian Observatory is an Australian astronomical organization operating the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, commissioned in 1974 and known for the 2dF galaxy redshift surveys.

Apache Point Observatory

Apache Point Observatory is a research astronomical observatory in the Sacramento Mountains of southern New Mexico, operated by the Astrophysical Research Consortium and home of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Arecibo Observatory

The Arecibo Observatory, also known as the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, was a 305-meter radio telescope in Puerto Rico that operated from 1963 until its collapse in 2020.

ARGO-YBJ

ARGO-YBJ was a Sino-Italian extensive air shower detector at the Yangbajing Cosmic Ray Observatory in Tibet, China, operating from 2007 to 2013 for gamma-ray and cosmic-ray physics.

ASTRI-Horn

ASTRI-Horn is an Italian prototype Cherenkov telescope on Mount Etna, Sicily, the first to use a dual-mirror design, built by INAF for the Cherenkov Telescope Array.

Atacama Cosmology Telescope

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) was a 6-meter millimeter-wave telescope at 5190 meters on Cerro Toco in Chile, built to map the cosmic microwave background from 2007 to 2022.

Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is a radio observatory of 66 antennas on the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile's Atacama Desert, observing star formation and distant galaxies.

Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder

The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is a radio telescope of 36 dish antennas operated by CSIRO in Western Australia, and a Square Kilometre Array precursor.

Black Hole Explorer

Black Hole Explorer, or BHEX, is a proposed NASA space VLBI mission to image supermassive black holes like M87 and measure the photon ring, targeted for launch in 2031.

BlackGEM

BlackGEM is an array of three 65-cm optical survey telescopes at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, built to find the visible light from neutron-star mergers detected by gravitational-wave detectors like LIGO.

Breakthrough Listen

Breakthrough Listen is a privately funded ten-year astronomical program launched in 2015 with $100 million from Yuri Milner, using major radio telescopes to search for technosignatures from extraterrestrial technology.

Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment

The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is a radio telescope at Penticton, British Columbia, commissioned in 2017 to map hydrogen and detect fast radio bursts.

CARMENES

CARMENES is a dual-channel échelle spectrograph on the 3.5 m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain, built to detect low-mass planets around M dwarf stars.

Cassegrain telescope

The Cassegrain telescope is a reflecting telescope in which a convex secondary mirror folds light back through a hole in the primary, giving a compact tube; the design was published in 1672.

Celestial globe

A celestial globe is a spherical model of the heavens with stars and constellations plotted on the outside, showing a view from outside the sky, and used to teach astronomy.

Cerro Pachón

Cerro Pachón is a mountain in the Coquimbo Region of northern Chile, on the edge of the Atacama Desert, that hosts the Gemini South, SOAR, and Vera C. Rubin Observatory telescopes.

Cerro Paranal

Cerro Paranal is a mountain in Chile's Atacama Desert, about 120 km south of Antofagasta, hosting the ESO Paranal Observatory and its Very Large Telescope.

Cerro Tololo

Cerro Tololo is a 2,200-meter mountain in Chile's Coquimbo Region, 450 km north of Santiago, hosting the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, whose Víctor M. Blanco Telescope has been a leading southern-hemisphere research site since 1965.

Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory

The Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) is a complex of optical astronomical telescopes on Cerro Tololo in northern Chile, at an altitude of 2,200 meters.

Chandra X-ray Observatory

The Chandra X-ray Observatory, originally named the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, is a NASA X-ray astronomy satellite launched in 1999, one of its four Great Observatories.

Chinese Space Station Telescope

The Chinese Space Station Telescope, also called Xuntian, is a planned two-meter optical space telescope China will fly alongside the Tiangong space station to survey billions of galaxies.

CRACO

CRACO (Commensal Realtime ASKAP Fast Transient COherent) is a backend on the ASKAP radio telescope that detects fast radio bursts, pulsars, and ultra-long period objects.

Crimean Astrophysical Observatory

The Crimean Astrophysical Observatory is an astronomical research institute at Nauchny in the Crimean Mountains, founded in 1945, whose main 2.6-m Shajn Telescope was once the largest in Europe.

DAMPE

DAMPE, the Dark Matter Particle Explorer nicknamed Wukong, is a Chinese satellite launched in 2015 to search for dark matter by observing high-energy gamma rays and cosmic rays.

Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is the world's largest solar telescope, a 4-meter instrument on Haleakalā in Maui, Hawaii that measures the Sun's magnetic fields.